Atonement
by CeruleanSlane
Summary: Taylor died in the locker. In her guilt, Madison triggered instead and became a superhero, to make up for her mistakes. Seen first on spacebattles, archived here for easier reading and for other people to find.
1. Arc 1: Liability

**1.01**

"She's dead."

The words felt alien, wrong somehow even as I spoke them. Two words. That was all it took. That wasn't right. There had to be more to it. A human life was gone. Gone. It was never coming back. She was never coming back. It had to take more than two words to erase someone's life.

Why wasn't that a rule? Why wasn't there a rule somewhere that said that when someone died, you had to use more than two words to express that fact? There just... there had to be more to it. There had to be. People died, and everyone else just... kept going. The world turned, the sun went up and down, and everything kept going.

I felt something vile rise in the back of my throat, burning a bit as I closed my hand over my mouth. I turned my head to cough sharply, feeling the stinging tears at my own eyes. God. Oh god, please. Please don't let this be real. I didn't mean it. I didn't mean any of it. I'll take it back. I'll do something better this time. Fix it. Please fix it.

My eyes closed tightly as I prayed to no particular deity. Please. Please.

"What did we do...?" I moaned in horror as the scenes in question played back in my own memory against closed eyelids.

Instantly, I felt a sharp pain in my cheek as I was slapped, hard. Before I could fall, a strong grip took hold of my collar, and I was shoved back against the wall with enough force to almost knock the wind out of me.

My eyes opened, and I found Sophia's enraged, unhinged glare directed at me. She was holding my collar so tightly I could barely breathe. Beyond her, I saw Emma staring with wide, pleading eyes that were still damp from the tears that I knew she kept shedding.

"Nothing." Sophia growled out the word, squeezing tighter for further emphasis. "We did nothing. It's not our fault the bitch couldn't take a few jokes. Not our fault she was too much of a wimp, a loser, to even stand up for herself. That's all she had to do. Just once. Just fucking once!" She shouted the last word, looking even more angry now, so furious that I didn't dare move. "All Hebert had to do was fight back, one fucking time. That's all I wanted. I wanted her to prove she deserved to live. She didn't. She fucking didn't, and that's not our god damn fault. It's not my god damn fault, and I'm not fucking going to suffer for it."

I stared, disbelieving. "She's dead." I managed again. "Taylor's dead, because we-"

The blow sent me to the ground, sending dark spots dancing through my vision before Sophia took hold of my hair and yanked hard. She ignored Emma shouting her name, and yanked harder. I thought my hair was going to tear away from my scalp.

"I said, we did nothing!" The shout came against my ear, and I felt Sophia's other hand catch my wrist, pinning it up against my back and twisting just enough to send a spasm of pain through it.

"I don't care how cute you think you are, Madison." Sophia's voice had quieted, but was no less angry or dangerous. "If you push me on this, I will win. Because I'm stronger than you, I'm smarter than you, and I'm better than you."

Her breath was hot against my ear. "Like I said, I'm not going to suffer just because poor little Taylor Hebert has a fucking heart attack from some stupid locker prank. A heart attack? What teenager has a fucking heart attack? She died because she wasn't fit, because she was a loser, a fucking pathetic little shit who can't take a joke. She just sat there with those stupid, pathetic mopey ass eyes instead of doing something about it. She was prey. That's why she died, because her own body knew she was too weak to live."

"I'm not going down for that." She continued, giving my hair an extra twist. "She was prey, but I'm a predator. She was a loser, I'm a winner. So push me on this, push me just a little bit more, and we'll see how strong you are. We'll see if you last any longer than she did."

"Let her go, Soph." Emma was there next to us, her voice pleading, desperate. "Just let her go. She's not going to talk to anyone, are you, Maddy? No one's going to say anything."

Sophia released me, and I fell to my knees, flinching as my body assessed the pain she had doled out over those few moments.

"That right, Madison?" The girl, whose psychotic tendencies I was only beginning to understand despite being around her for so long, pressed. "Your mouth stays shut, and nobody finds out we had anything to do with that fucking freak's heart attack. Got it?"

I looked up, and saw Emma's pleading look. She just wanted this to go away, even if that meant ignoring it. I knew she was upset about Taylor. She'd have to be. Even after everything... everything we did to Taylor, I knew that she and Emma had been friends at one point.

She'd just considered Sophia to be a friend worth not only dropping her former friend for, but worth turning against completely. Worth attacking, shaming, humiliating, even torturing.

Worth killing? Because I held no illusions on that front. Taylor was dead because of us. Because we pushed her too far. She was dead, and it was our fault, whatever psychotic justification Sophia spat out.

I took a breath, then let it out. The pain in my scalp was distracting. "They'll investigate." I said flatly.

"They won't find anything." Sophia replied, rather smugly, I thought. "And even if they did... well, they'll pretend they didn't."

That made me frown. "What... why...?"

"Sophia," Emma's voice held a warning tone. "Don't."

In response, Sophia turned to stare at the other girl. Whatever expression she had, it made Emma shrink back, averting her gaze with a fearful look. The message had been clear. Sophia wouldn't hesitate to turn her crazy against Emma as well if she felt threatened.

Then she focused on me once again, the dark skin of her hand passing back and forth in front of my face. "You watching this, Mads? Because this might be the most important demonstration of your life."

As I stared, afraid to look away, Sophia's body turned wispy and indistinct. Before my eyes, she took a step sideways, passing right through the wall before emerging again. The look on her face now was predatory, mixed with something like pride. She enjoyed showing off, and she was enjoying the look of shock on my face.

"You- y-you're... you're a... you're a..." I couldn't say it. "You're a cape. You're a villain."

To that, Sophia tilted her head back and laughed out loud. It was brief, and then her face was suddenly bare inches from mine, her hand gripping my hair once more.

"No, Madison." She said in a low, dangerous voice. "I'm a hero. I'm Shadow Stalker."

A cold chill ran through me, and I whispered, "But she's with the Wards."

"That's right." Sophia nodded, before leaning even closer, so that our noses were touching. "That's why nothing is going to happen to me. You say a single word about this, and it won't be just me shutting you up, it'll be the Protectorate. You think they'll let something like this get out? They'll bury it deeper than Taylor's being buried."

"If they need to, they'll bury you too." Sophia's words had turned to a whisper that sent a shudder through me and drew an involuntary whimper. "My word versus yours, Maddy. Best case scenario, best case, you take the full heat. You want to be some kind of martyr or something, be my guest. But you go down alone. You bring me up, and you better pray the Protectorate gets to you first."

"Because if they don't, if I think you're a threat, then Taylor won't be the only student with a memorial in the hall at school."

Sophia straightened, her expression turning back to the welcoming smile that I was more familiar with. "Or we can just keep being friends." She said easily, extending her hand to me. "You want that, right, Mads? You want to be friends with me."

I stared at her. The threatening, psychotic look was gone. She looked normal, not the slightest bit unhinged. She even looked a little bit amused at the entire affair, like everything was just one big joke, like it wasn't a big deal.

"You're crazy." I said, not realizing I'd spoken aloud until Emma's eyes widened in alarm.

The blows came rapidly, one after another. One hit my face and knocked my head to the side, and then I felt another two blows against my chest and stomach, doubling me over. A blinding pain hit my leg and dumped me to the ground, followed by two hard and violent kicks to my stomach that made me throw up what very little I'd been able to eat since hearing the news that morning.

I curled into a ball, taking two more kicks against my arms before the attack stopped. It took me a moment before I risked opening my eyes.

Emma was leading Sophia away, tugging her out of my otherwise empty house, where we had met up to talk this out after the news of Taylor's death had spread through the school.

Sophia let herself be led, smiling mockingly back at my crumpled form. "Just remember, Mads, you had a choice. You chose this. I tried to help you. I tried to make you better. This, what comes next, it's your fault."

Then they were both gone, and I let my head slump once more, falling limp against the floor of my family's dining room as I felt a bit of blood trickle from my nose.

Sophia had said one thing that I agreed with, after a fashion. This was, in some ways, my fault. It was at least partly my fault that Taylor was dead.

My fault.

My fault.

My eyes closed, and what I saw, I forgot immediately. But the effects of what I had seen, the effects of that trigger event, changed everything in my life, forever.

**1.02**

I must have zoned out, because the next thing I knew, the door was slamming shut. I jumped, startled, as my older brother came stomping through the house. I knew it was Trevor, because he was the only one that stomped like that. He hated his college classes, and he hated the job that he went to after those classes even more. Hence the stomping.

Trevor stormed right past the dining room without looking inside, which was probably a good thing considering I didn't feel like trying to explain why I looked the way I probably did.

With that thought in mind, I picked myself up and turned to find the mirror on the wall. I moved closer to examine myself, wincing at both the hollow, terrified expression that stared back at me, as well as my bloody nose and bruises.

Gingerly touching my cheek, I closed my eyes and tried not to whimper. What was I going to do? What **could** I do, even? Sophia was a member of the Wards. She was a cape, a hero even. They'd never take my word for it, and Emma had made it clear that while she obviously felt horrible, she wasn't willing to turn against Sophia. We had both made our bed, and Emma was willing to lay in it. Or she was just too afraid not to.

Fuck. It should be Emma that felt this way. Taylor had been her friend in the first place. She should be the one so racked by guilt she felt like throwing up again. She should be here, not out with Sophia.

Sophia. Even the thought of her made me shudder. I'd known, intellectually, that she was a sociopath. But somehow when it had been directed (mostly) at Taylor, who never fought back, it had been easy to ignore. Bad stuff was always easier to dismiss when it wasn't directed at you.

But now... I put my hands over my face gingerly and shuddered. Now everything was wrong. Taylor was dead. She wasn't supposed to die. Why did she have to die? Why did I have to feel like this?

I hadn't known just how crazy Sophia was. I hadn't known just how close to the edge Taylor was, or that the stupid locker prank would... would kill her.

I didn't know. I felt like screaming that at the top of my lungs, annoyed brother be damned. I didn't know!

There were consequences to my actions, and I had ignored them. I had dismissed them. And now, ignoring the consequences was coming back to haunt me.

The whole time that I'd stood there, I'd felt an odd little itch almost directly behind my eyes. I squeezed them shut, then open, then shut again. When I opened them the third time, I jumped a little at the sight of a hazy, indistinct line going from the middle of the mirror, past my face, and off behind me.

Turning, my eyes followed the nearly transparent line from the mirror to one of the dining room chairs. Frowning, I hesitantly lifted a hand to brush at the line, only to have my fingers go right through as though it wasn't really there.

Yet, I could somehow _feel_ the line. Not with my hand, but with... some other sense. I could feel the connection between the mirror and the chair as the line remained taut between them.

What... what was going on? Confused, I imagined my sense traveling up and down the line, then gave a slight tug at the end with the chair.

The effect was instantaneous. The chair leapt off the floor and hurled straight down the line that connected it to the other object. Eyes widening, I let out a yelp of surprise and hit the floor, just in time for the chair to hurtle over my head and slam into the mirror with a terrifying crash that sent glass shards flying.

By the time that I had picked myself off the floor, Trevor had come galloping back down the stairs and slammed his way into the kitchen, one hand holding his old Little League baseball bat from several years earlier. His eyes were wide and wild as he gazed around the room before locking on me. "Madison," He asked in clear disbelief. "What the fuck happened? What did you do?"

I looked at the shattered glass on the floor, surrounding the broken chair. "I... I... it was an accident." Truth.

"An accident." He echoed, staring at me, then at the mess. "What the hell? How- no, you know what, I don't give a shit.. I'm not cleaning it up, and I'm not explaining it. That's your job. You get to tell mom and dad why you did... all this." He gestured around with the bat, then left the room with one last remark over his shoulder. "Maybe they'll finally figure out that you're not the cute little innocent girl you pretend to be."

His words made me flinch, where a week ago I would have ignored him. Sighing, I turned back to look at the room once more.

The line was back. This time it stretched between one of mom's paintings, and the glass centerpiece on the table. "Oh no, no no no." I reached out with that invisible sense once more, testing the line but not pulling on it. I was so intent on making sure that the centerpiece wasn't pulled by the line, that the next thing I knew, it was being _**pushed**_ back along the same line, increasing the distance between it and the painting rather than shrinking it as the line between the chair and the mirror had.

Lunging with an arm outstretched as the centerpiece was shoved off the side of the dining room table, I cried out in desperate alarm. Mom loved that little glass thing almost as much as she loved her kids.

In response to my alarm, the _push_ on the line reversed and instantly began to pull instead. The centerpiece stopped falling, and went flying into the air toward the painting instead. I barely managed to put myself in its path, catching it against my chest with a grunt.

Carefully, I set the glass down, looked around the room once more, and then fled the room before something else could happen. I had to get out of there, and figure out what the hell was happening to me.

Walking quickly down the street, I kept looking around. The near-transparent lines kept following me, jumping between any two given objects seemingly at random. I just ignored them as best as I could, trying not to think about what would happen if the line connected between a couple of cars and I let it pull them together.

Harder to ignore was the _other_ line. I hadn't noticed it in the house, but once I walked outside, there was a pale pink line going straight from the middle of my stomach and off into various people that I passed.

The postman was the first one that I noticed it on. The pink line connected the two of us and then just sat there. I felt nothing through it and kept walking. A few steps later it jumped to attach itself to Mrs. DeCampes walking her dog, and again I felt nothing.

Then the line jumped once again, as a blue sedan passed me on the street. I saw the line attach itself to the driver, and the pink color turned slightly darker, to a very faint red. This time, when I started to walk on, I felt a weak, yet noticeable tug back the other way.

Turning, I watched as the sedan pulled away, and the light red line grew tighter, still giving that faint tug. I could ignore it, but the feeling confused me. Not to mention the fear that came with the thought that the pinkish red line might do what the other line could do and somehow yank that car right at me.

Instead, the faint red line let itself be spooled out, stretching further and further as the car got further away.

Then, as the sedan began to turn at the corner on the end of our street, another car went right through the stop sign, failed to stop in time, and crashed into the rear right bumper. The red line vanished, and I stared in shock as the two drivers slowly got out of their vehicles and began to yell at each other.

I must have stood there on the sidewalk staring for five minutes before I tore myself away, turning to run in the opposite direction. Every step I took, the transparent line kept attaching itself to various objects, while the pale pink line kept one end attached to me and the other jumped from person to person. Sometimes it was so lightly colored pink that it was almost as invisible as the other line, while other times it grew slightly darker and I would feel that faint tug.

I was passing a rundown gas station that had been closed forever, when the pale pink line abruptly latched on to a tall figure with a large duffel bag loitering outside of the boarded up building. The line went from pink to a very dark red, and solidified so much that I almost couldn't take another step away. The line was so tight, so strong, that taking one step away was like pulling against a physical cord that didn't want to stretch any further. I _could_ move away, but it was physically tiring to do so.

Remembering the faint red line that had led to the car crash, I stared at this dark red one hesitantly. What did it mean? How dangerous, how bad was a situation that went from no tug, to an almost irresistible one?

The loitering man gave one last look around, ignoring me, before turning and walking into the abandoned gas station. The line tugged me along with him, and I let it, following along across the parking lot.

When I reached the entrance, the door wasn't quite closed all the way. Hearing voices inside, I moved closer and listened.

"So you got the product or not?" A loud, annoyed voice demanded, making me jump as it echoed through the obviously empty building.

"It's right here." A voice replied from right near the door, clearly the man I had been connected to. "Lemme see the cash first."

"Nah. Product first, then cash." The first voice responded smugly. "That's how Skidmark does things." There was a slight pause, followed by, "Unless you'd like me to call him up and see if he wants to change things just for you."

The man near the door replied quickly, nervousness evident in his voice. "No no no, that's fine. Just... here, look. Everything you ordered." I heard the duffel bag unzip, and something inside was jostled around as though the man was shoving his hand through it to indicate to the other man what was there.

"Cool." The first voice said approvingly. Then I heard a distinctive clicking noise that anyone who had seen any movie with guns involved could recognize.

"What the- hey!" The man by the door sounded even closer, as though he had taken a step back toward the door. "What the hell, man?!"

The first man gave a low chuckle. "You think we're stupid? You think Skidmark got to be leader of the Merchants because he's a fucking retard? You've been talking to that cop lady, Detective Rodriguez."

I could feel and hear the other man edging closer to the door. "N-no way, man. No way I'd talk to no cop." There was a pause, and the first man must have done something with the gun, because the man that my line had attached itself to gave a sharp cry of fear. "Okay, okay, okay! I'm sorry! I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry! It's my girl. She's pregnant, man. I'm gonna be a dad. I'm gonna be a dad. I can't be doing this. I just wanted out."

The first man's voice was hard and cold. "Shoulda trusted us."

That red line turned even darker, almost black, and I felt bile in my throat once more before jumping through the doorway with a shout. "Stop it!"

Both of the men were taken by surprise by my sudden appearance, and the influx of light in the otherwise dark room as the door was slammed open briefly blinded them. I heard a gunshot as the first man reflexively pulled the trigger, but his aim had been thrown off by his surprise.

The gun was coming up again, pointed in my direction. I saw the transparent line attach itself to one end of the pistol and then to an abandoned crate in the corner.

I reached out with the sense that ran along that line. Anchoring the crate where it was, I _pulled_ at the end of the line that was attached to the pistol. It instantly leapt from the man's hand, slamming into the crate with so much force the plastic container was cracked.

"Fuck!" The man who had been disarmed shouted. He started to come at me, and I quickly recoiled, terrified. My blind desperation for the man to get away from me sent the tether toward the back of the man's belt, while the other end connected to the far wall. I tugged on the end attached to the man's belt, and he went flying backwards barely a second before he would have reached me.

Something hit me from the side, sending me crashing to the floor. It was the man I had followed in here. He shoved me out of the way, ignoring my fall as he ran straight out the door and fled for his life. The dark red line that had connected us was as pale as any of the others that I had passed before, now that he was out of immediate danger.

When I looked up to the other side of the room, the other man was scrambling out a nearby broken window, apparently deciding that this wasn't worth continuing.

Left alone in the abandoned gas station, I let my head slump back toward the floor and closed my eyes to take this in.

I had powers. Strange powers. The first was fairly easy to understand. I could connect any two objects and either pull one toward the other (or both together maybe?) or push them apart along the same line.

On the other hand, there was that second line that kept connecting me to other people. It seemed to have little to no effect as long as they were safe, but the more immediate danger the person it connected to was in, the more it pulled me toward them. It was like a danger sense related to others, rather than myself.

Powers. That's what they were. I had powers.

As I lay there on the dirty ground, still bruised from earlier, I closed my eyes and muttered three words under my breath, the three words that meant nothing at this point, and yet also meant everything.

"I'm sorry, Taylor."

**1.03**

Over the next several months, I gained a firsthand knowledge of just what kind of hell I had helped put Taylor through. With the loss of her favorite target, and my refusal to go back to the way things were, Sophia had decided that I made an adequate replacement. Emma remained too much of a coward to make more than a halfhearted protest before gleefully joining in with any idea that the crazy bitch put forth.

From nasty remarks made whenever their hangers-on passed by, to stuff being 'accidentally' spilled over me or my stuff, to being all but openly attacked in gym class under the guise of one sport or another, and more, Sophia made her point perfectly clear. This was the tame stuff. If I screwed her over by going to the authorities, she'd retaliate.

It wasn't just Emma either. All of the friends that I'd thought I'd had abandoned me. Given the choice to either stick up for the person who had been the number three girl in the top clique in our grade, or kick me to the curb and vie for that spot themselves, the decision they made wasn't exactly surprising.

Through it all, I suppressed the urge to use my new powers in class. I wanted nothing, absolutely nothing, tying those powers to me. Besides, a not insubstantial part of me felt like I deserved it. I'd not only done nothing to stop the bullying that had ended with Taylor's death, I'd perpetuated it. I'd had fucking **fun**. So no, I didn't deserve to speak up and make them stop now that they were directing it toward me.

So that was school. All of my time other than that over the last months had been directed toward practicing with these new powers so that I could understand them, and toward preparing to use them to help people.

That was something I had to do. After what I'd done, what I'd helped cause, what I'd contributed to, I had to use the power that I'd been given to _help _people. Not only because my power literally directed me toward people who were in danger of being killed, but because Taylor's death was at least partly my fault. The red line gave me the **opportunity **to save people. The **motivation **was buried deep inside, where it woke me every morning and kept me awake long after I had laid down at night. It drove me to practice with my power, ignore the things that Sophia and Emma, my former best friends, did, and to prepare to actually show myself to the city at large.

April had arrived before I felt like I was ready. Finally, I stood in my bedroom, staring down at the outfit I had put together over the last dozen weeks.

My costume was simple. It consisted of flame-retardant ACU (army combat uniform) pants in urban camo, a pair of black steel toe hiking boots, a white turtleneck that was tucked into the pants and held tight with a wide leather belt, and a black vest that had an attached hood. At the top of the ensemble was a white balaclava mask that left my eyes exposed.

Finally, my gloves were tight against my wrist, and I used two buckle strap wrist bands to hold them even tighter. That way, if I made one point of the line attach itself to my glove, and the other two some distant object, _pulling_ from the object's end would yank me along, rather than just tearing my glove off.

It wasn't going to win any awards, that much was for sure. But unless I wanted the police to know exactly and precisely who I was just from tracking suspicious (and expensive) deliveries, I had to make do with what I could get at the local thrift and military surplus stores.

Besides, I wanted to separate my costumed self as much as possible from my 'real' self. In school, I was known for wearing cute girly clothes, with lots of pink and blue. While popular, I was not exactly what most would consider to be overtly hot. Instead, I was more... adorable and cute. In the past, I had played that up because it got me attention. Now, I kept the same habits (in spite of the belittlement about being a baby or how I should go back to middle school that it got me) so that my cape-self would never be associated with innocent, girly Madison Clements.

It was late by the time I began to suit up, and when I left the house through my bedroom window, the whole neighborhood was dark.

Once I was far enough away from my house, and closer to the bad side of town, by the assorted apartments and warehouses that made up most of the so-called 'docks' area, I decided that it was time to cut loose and really experiment with what this power could do. Up until then, I had been resisting overt displays so that I wouldn't get caught and questioned. Now, in costume, I felt like pushing things.

Looking toward the far top corner of a warehouse in the distance, I extended a hand toward it. I let my line attach itself to my glove, and to the smoke stack that I could barely see the top of. For a moment, I stood that way, closed my eyes to murmur a prayer, and then tugged from the smokestack end of the line.

I'd thought that I was ready. I was wrong. A panicked and utterly undignified squeal escaped me as I was torn from the ground, hurled through the air, and all but flung at the smokestack. I nearly rammed straight into the thing before managing to connect a second line to the warehouse roof and released the first one. Before I could face plant against the chimney, I tugged on the new line. Immediately, my forward momentum halted and I began to fall straight down. At the last second, I reversed the pull into a push, stopping myself from slamming into the roof of the warehouse. I adjusted the strength of the push as low as I could, so that gravity could still pull me down, but at a greatly reduced speed.

It was with shaking legs that I finally settled on the roof, almost collapsing to my knees before catching myself. I turned to look back at where I had been standing over two blocks away. Two blocks that I had traveled in seconds.

"That..." I said slowly to myself, eyes wide in shock. "That was..." I worked my mouth and then gave a little jump into the air with my hands high above my head. "...**AWESOME!**"

Pointing both hands at the ground, I attached the lines between the roof and my gloves, and gave a hard push that shoved me a dozen feet into the air. Then I reached out a hand toward another building, attached another invisible line, and yanked myself that way.

It was a constant balancing act between pushing and pulling, and I nearly wiped out several more times while I was getting the hang of it. I had to constantly switch between yanking myself forward to gain momentum, and pushing myself to control or mitigate that momentum, or to change directions. It helped when I belatedly realized that I could just attach my 'push off' lines to my boots to simulate a really high jump, leaving my hands free for the subsequent 'pull'.

It was also the most pure fun I'd had in my entire life.

So enthralled was I with experimenting, that I very nearly entirely missed the dark red line that had attached itself from my chest to some point around the corner until it yanked me unexpectedly off balance. Almost crashing into a billboard, I adjusted at the last second and looked at the red line.

In spite of myself, I gulped uncertainly. Behind the mask, I was still squishy, confused little Madison. I was still afraid of what might happen if I got involved.

And yet, the idea of not involving myself, and letting another person die, was so much worse. Swallowing back my fear, I pointed a glove along the same path as the red line, attached my own line to the nearest streetlight (which itself wasn't giving off any light), and let it yank me that way.

Landing on top of the broken streetlight, I nearly slipped right off before catching myself. In the dim parking lot below me, I could see three street toughs, members of the local ABB gang if their Asian features were any indication, surrounding and looming over a smaller figure, who had fallen to the ground. The red line had attached itself to the fallen figure.

As one of the Asian men raised his hand with a chain wrapped around it, I called out to grab his attention. "Hey!" Once all three of the men whirled and looked up, I made an exaggerated motion of confusion, raising both arms in a wide shrug. "Is this where the line for the new iPhone starts?"

Immediately, two guns were pointed at me, and I instantly used a line attached to my boot to _push_ off the streetlight and into the air, then reached out a hand toward the side of the nearby building and yanked myself that way. Twin shots rang out, but I was already off the lamp and hurtling over their heads. As I passed by, I attached a line to the barrel of each gun, with the other end of the lines attached to the corners of the parking lot. A swift tug hauled the pistols out of the hands of the two men who had been using them.

Before I could crash into the side of the building, I reversed my pull line into a push line, released it once my momentum was going in the opposite direction, and then used a very light push line to give myself a swift, but relatively gentle landing.

I faced the three gang members, one of whom still had his chain, while the other two were blinking at their empty hands. I continued as though I hadn't been interrupted by their gunfire. "To be honest, I don't get the hype, personally. I mean, it's a phone, just like the last... which version is this?"

One of the men lunged to grab my arm, a knife in his hand. "You have any last request, funny girl?" He demanded in faintly accented English.

"Sure." I replied easily, not bothering to shake him off or struggle. "Could you hit a high C for me?" When the man just blinked in confusion, I first attached his knife to the lamppost, and it was yanked away from him. Then I tilted my head to the side while attaching his shoes to each other. With a smile that was hidden behind my mask, I made the line _push_ both shoes away from each other. The man's feet went out from under him, hauled out to either side as he was forced into doing the splits.

"Thanks!" I called out after his loud, shrill shriek had filled the air, fulfilling my request.

Unfortunately, I'd let myself get distracted. The remaining two men each grabbed an arm and began to yank me away. The one with the chain glowered, pointing a finger into my face. "You get tour of Lung's base, little girl. You will not like it." He was, sadly, smart enough to cover my face with his free hand so that I couldn't see to attach any lines.

"A tour?" I echoed, trying to mask the sudden fear I felt when the dangerous leader of the ABB was mentioned. Lung was far out of my league.

The men were holding me tight as they dragged, and I needed a distraction. I went with the first idea that came to mind. I screamed. "I DIDN'T SIGN UP FOR ANY TOUR. I WANNA GO HOME I WANNA GET OUT I WANT YOUR BADGE NUMBER ARE YOU EVEN A COP DO YOU EVEN LIFT WHAT KIND OF TOUR IS THIS LET ME OUT THIS IS KIDNAPPING DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY YEARS IN PRISON YOU CAN GET I'M A WHITE TEENAGED GIRL THAT'S JURY CATNIP THEY'LL PROBABLY GIVE YOU THE DEATH PENALTY YOU SICKO!"

Apparently the semi-random tsunami of words I was hurling at the men made them pause in confusion, just long enough for me to twist my head free from the man's hand. The second I could see again, I attached the backs of the men's pants to the nearby wall, hauling them away from me so quickly that they hit the wall hard.

Yet not quite hard enough. I had been trying to avoid killing anyone, and I must have lessened the blow too much. They were still standing, though briefly stunned. Before the pair could collect themselves, I pointed, attaching the line from the ring on one man's finger, to the nose piercing that the other man sported. A tug on the line made the man's hand lash out lightning fast to smack the second man in the face so hard he collapsed with a nose that was spraying blood.

Keeping the line attached to the man's ring, I quickly switched the other end so that it was linked to the zipper of his pants. Subsequently, he punched himself in the groin so hard he literally started to throw up after collapsing.

Each of the three men were all down, in various states of agony, and I finally turned my attention to the person that had gained my other power's attention. The dark red line had faded once more, and the figure was already picking themselves up off the ground.

"Ugghn..." She groaned, shaking her head slowly before focusing my way, giving me my first glimpse at who I had saved.

"Who the hell are you?" Shadow Stalker, **Sophia** demanded.

**1.04**

It was all I could do not to lash out physically at the sight of Sophia in her Shadow Stalker guise. Honestly, I felt a little sick inside when I looked at her. She was a member of the Wards, a hero. She was supposed to _help_ people, and be a beacon of hope and safety to the public. I didn't think that 'give a shit when your actions directly result in someone's death' was asking for too much.

On the other hand, just because I had to restrain myself physically, didn't mean I had to do so vocally. Once I had recovered from the realization of who I had just saved, I immediately swept into an exaggerated bow. I deepened my voice slightly, hoping that combined with the muffling from the fabric against my mouth, and Sophia's own dismissal of helpless little Madison as prey would fully hide my identity. "No need to thank me, ma'am. Rescuing helpless damsels is part of the job."

It took Sophia just a second to follow what I was implying. "Rescuing helpless- what the fuck?!" Her face was hidden behind the mask that had a stern woman's expression designed on the front of it, but I read enough of her body language to know that she was angry.

That and it was Sophia, so 'angry' pretty much went with the territory.

I held my hands up placatingly. "Careful, you've had a bit of a rough night. I know meeting a real superhero is exciting, but take it easy."

Furious now, Sophia grabbed for the crossbow at her side. "I don't know who the hell you think you are, but-"

As the crossbow came off her belt, I extended a hand, linking the weapon to my glove and giving a pull so that the crossbow flew out of Sophia's hand and straight to my own. I turned the weapon over, making a show of examining it as I raised my voice in mock excitement. "A present, for me?! No, please, I couldn't possibly. A hero doesn't need payment to do the right thing."

While Sophia stood, briefly shocked into silence from the force of her disbelief and anger, I tossed the crossbow aside and held my arms open as though waiting for a hug. "Shhh. I know you were scared, but I'm here now, you're safe."

That did it. With an inarticulate cry, Sophia lunged toward me, her shape turning indistinct as she used her shadow powers. I just lifted one foot slightly, put a line between my boot and the ground, and gave a hard push to propel myself a good fifteen feet into the air so that she would pass through the empty space where I had been. Turning in the air, I used a slight pull from one of my gloves to the nearby wall before lowering the intensity of the push so that gravity would set me back down a few yards away.

"No, no. Sorry." I made my voice sound consoling. "No autographs today."

Spotting her crossbow nearby where I had tossed it, Sophia dove that way and snatched it up. She turned, but before either of us could do anything else, a figure flew down from the sky and landed between us.

When he straightened and looked toward me, I recognized Aegis, the current team leader of the Brockton Bay Wards. His costume was rust red with silver-white trim and an emblem of a shield. He also wore a matching helmet that covered his face.

"What's going on?" He asked, looking between Sophia and me.

Holding her crossbow in one hand, Sophia gestured for Aegis to move. "Out of my way. Some smartass needs a lesson."

The boy seemed to ignore that, turning back toward me. "You wanna tell me who you are?"

Sophia made a motion as though to move around Aegis, and I saw the area around her distort, the street and building beyond where she was standing seeming to scrunch up together, almost like an accordion of images. Then another pair of figures moved through the distorted space, and when it moved back top normal, two more had joined us. There was Vista in her green and white swirly costume with the skirt and clearly _optimistic_ breastplate, and Gallant in his gunmetal and silver armored costume that made him look like a science fiction hero's take on a medieval knight.

Vista stood with a hand up against Sophia's arm while speaking to their team leader. "She saved Shadow Stalker."

"Bullshit!" Sophia declared vehemently. She shook the youngest Ward member's hand off her arm. "She just got in my way."

"It's okay, Stalker." Gallant spoke for the first time. I noticed that he had also moved beside Aegis, putting the both of them between Sophia and me. "We'll work it out. All that matters is that the bad guys are down."

From the way Sophia was standing, she didn't quite agree with that assessment. "What the hell are you even doing here?"

There was a little reproach in Aegis's voice as he answered. "Vista called in for backup when you took off on your own. You know she's not supposed to be doing solo patrols yet."

Most of the top of Vista's face was hidden by her green visor, but I still recognized her scowl. I wasn't sure that it had happened exactly as Aegis said, but the younger girl apparently wasn't willing to argue with him. Whether her reluctance to disagree was more because of my presence or Sophia's, I couldn't say.

"So like I said, what do we call you?" The leader of the Wards focused on me once more as he restated the question, now with Vista and Gallant watching me curiously as well, while Sophia just seemed to scowl and look away in annoyance.

I hesitated, reconsidering a few times. Was there a better name I could use? Should I even give a name? Was the name that I'd chosen too silly or stupid?

Then again, this was a team that let someone like Sophia stay. I could already tell that they didn't really get along with her, yet they'd still let her get away with murder if she just kept calling herself a teammate. So what the hell did I care what they thought of my name?

"Tether." I answered after that brief pause. "Call me Tether."

"Tether." Aegis echoed before nodding. "Right, well thanks for..." He paused, glancing over his shoulder at Sophia before turning back to me. "... assisting our teammate. Vista, could you use the zipties on those guys before they wake up, and call in the nearest Black and white to pick them up? Assuming there were no capes in the mix?" I shook my head, and he gave the nod for the younger girl to go ahead.

While Vista was busy with that, Aegis stepped closer to me. "So listen, it looks like you did good here."

"Well." Gallant interrupted. "She did well here."

"That too." Aegis replied. It sounded like he was smiling. "Well and good. Point is, if you'd like to join us, the Wards could always use another pair of hands."

I felt a wave of intense disgust wash over me at the very thought of joining a team that would keep a _psychopath_ like Sophia on their payroll. It was obvious that she did little, if anything, to disguise her sociopathy. Yet they kept her around anyway. They made excuses for her actions. They let her get away with it. The thought of voluntarily allying myself with that kind of attitude, to say nothing of actually _unmasking_ so that Sophia would know who I was, brought an almost physical sense of revulsion.

A few feet away, Gallant actually staggered a little, as though I had hit him. The other Wards turned, but before the boy could speak up, I noticed something much more concerning. Sprouting from my chest was not just a single dark red line, but three. All were stretched out and around the corner.

"Help." I said immediately. If my power was telling me that **three** people were in immediate mortal danger, I needed assistance. Even if Sophia was part of that assistance. My disgust at her insanity, and at the Wards acceptance of it, wasn't worth more than people's lives.

"What?" Aegis glanced my way, distracted from checking on his teammate, who was waving him off and gazing at me with what felt like curiosity.

"People need help." I said firmly, extending a hand toward the nearby building. "Trust me, if we don't haul ass, three people are gonna die."

With that much said, I connected a line to the building rooftop and launched myself forward and up.

It wasn't hard to follow the red lines. They seemed to tug me onward, urging me to move faster. I kept going until I heard a sudden burst of gunfire from the direction of the lines, then homed in on the sound.

Another sustained round of automatic weapon fire greeted me as I hit the ground just behind a line of four men who were shooting at something massive that was rushing toward them. Connecting the barrels of each of their guns to the pavement, I forced the weapons to drop out of their hands, a second before some kind of car-sized monster-dog slammed into the group and sent them scattering like bowling pins.

"Holy crap, Lassie." I uttered out loud. "You keep juicing like that, and they'll totally take your home run record away."

The monster animal lunged my way now that its original prey were sprawled out every which direction. I launched myself skyward to avoid its lunge, extended a hand to snag a line against the ground nearby, and landed somewhere behind it, trying to get an idea of what was going on.

There was a flickering light in the windows of the building that I had landed near, which I now recognized as flames. In the doorway to my left, a blonde female figure in a violet and black skintight costume was slumped, unmoving. One of my red lines pointed her way, while the second was connected to a figure in what looked like dark motorcycle leathers and a helmet with a stylized skull on the front, who was also lying on the ground without moving.

A sharp whistle interrupted my assessment, and the nightmare dog tore back to leap over my head. It landed ahead of me, rushing to join a solidly built girl with auburn hair, who was standing next to the unmoving form of another of the massive canines as though protecting it. From the sight of the plastic dog mask on her face, it seemed rather obvious that Lassie belonged to her. The third line was connected to this girl.

Slightly to the side of her was a boy who looked like he'd gotten lost on the way to a renaissance faire, with his billowy white shirt, skintight leggings, and crown. He even carried a scepter, while his own face was hidden behind a simple mask.

The boy and girl, and their giant dog friend, stood facing down another figure. The man looked to be almost eight feet tall. His face was hidden behind a metal dragon mask, and I could see various dragon tattoos all over his exposed chest, though some kind of silver metallic scales were growing to cover those designs.

With a deafening howl, the giant dog monster lunged for the standing figure. He just stood there, caught the dog's jaws and howled back in its face like a madman, then pivoted and pitched the animal hard into the wall. It didn't rise again, even as the girl in the dog mask shouted something in anger.

Beside me, I saw Aegis come in for a landing. He had carried Gallant. Vista distorted space a little to the side of where we were, and came through it along with Sophia.

When he saw what we were facing, I heard Aegis curse under his breath. "Kid," he said to no one in particular that I could see. "Call in Armsmaster and whoever else is nearby. Lung's here, and he's already amped up."

"We're gonna need some help."

**1.5**

Lung. The leader of the ABB. One of the most dangerous super-powered criminals in the city. He had fought the entire local Protectorate to a standstill and the best they'd managed was something like a tie.

We were so screwed.

He was already growing bigger as a result of his little altercation with the dog, letting out a roar before starting toward the spot where the boy and girl still stood. Partway there, his arm twitched up and the beast punched himself in the face, staggering in mid-step. I'd seen the boy in the Ren Faire costume jerk the hand with the scepter up at the same time. It didn't seem to slow Lung for more than a second however, and the boy turned to retreat.

On the other hand, girl in the dog mask stood her ground, keeping herself between the rushing villain and one of her unconscious dogs. I had the nagging suspicion that she was about to try punching the guy.

It was Aegis, however, who did the punching. He'd flown straight up after calling for backup, and now he flew down again, fists outstretched until he slammed straight into Lung's shoulders, driving the now ten foot tall monster down into the ground barely a foot from his target.

For her part, the dog mask girl promptly lashed out with a foot to kick the briefly fallen beast in the face. It barely seemed to register, as the scale armoring by that point had spread to cover the rest of his body.

It wasn't an attack that she'd be able to try again, as flames were already spreading over Lung's body, engulfing him with enough heat to start melting the concrete beneath himself. I could see the girl forced to back up, pressing herself against the fallen dog while Lung began to straighten.

Abruptly, the ground just behind the briefly prone beast began to distort and twist, bending down and around to create a hole. Aegis, whose skin had been turned black and red in the spots where the armor had failed from the heat, rolled off of Lung and fell onto his back in front of the beast. He raised both feet, reared back, and then kicked the monstrous cape in the shoulders as hard as he could. The blow was enough to send Lung sliding backwards and partway into the hole that Vista had created.

As soon as the ABB leader had fallen halfway inside the hole, Vista, who was still standing beside me, made a gesture and_pushed_ the space around the ground together, closing it in once more and pinning him in place.

Immediately, Gallant began to pelt Lung with several quick blasts of concussive energy that, if I remembered correctly, could alter the emotions of the person he was hitting with them. If he _was_ altering Lung's emotions, it didn't really seem to have much effect. The man gave another roar and began to break his way out of the pavement that trapped him.

Though all of that, I had simply stood in place, frozen from fear. Random thugs were one thing, even if they were armed with guns. Guns were things I could just yank away from people. But Lung? He was a monster. Worse, he was a monster who literally kept getting stronger the longer that you fought him. I was so far out of my league it was ridiculous. What the hell was I supposed to do, besides play the part of the wayward traffic cone for Lung's out-of-control bus to run over on its way to something vaguely threatening?

Simply put, I was scared, and I froze. Someone shoved me aside, as Sophia pushed past me, muttering something about rookie cowards getting the hell out of her way. She brought up both of her crossbows, having retrieved the other one from wherever it had been, and shot a pair of darts against Lung's metal scales. The darts remained shadowy and insubstantial until they had passed through the armor plating before they solidified.

It definitely got the man's attention. He let out an inarticulate bellow as he straightened, shoving the last remains of the concrete off of himself. An even hotter burst of flame melted the bolts that were sticking out of his back, and he grunted slightly while whirling toward us. Sophia shot another pair of bolts at him, but he swiped these out of the way contemptuously.

Aegis made to punch the gang leader in the side, but Lung didn't even look at him as he brought a hand down to engulf the young hero's head, squeezed tightly to lift him off the ground, then set him directly on fire before pitching the now flaming missile straight at Sophia. She turned shadowy, and let the burning Aegis pass through her to crash somewhere out in the street.

He was coming straight at us then, and Sophia wasted no time throwing herself out of the way. Vista, on the other hand, grabbed my hand and yanked me backwards. We took one step, and suddenly the pair of us were out in the street where Aegis was rolling around, trying to put the flames out.

Finally, _finally_ I snapped out of my frozen terror. Reaching a hand out toward the nearby fire hydrant, I anchored one end of a line to the end of the hydrant, and the other end to the street. Then I pulled hard against the hydrant, yanking the cap off and sending a geyser of water into the road. As soon as he saw it, Aegis managed to roll that way, making the water engulf him and put out the flames.

Gallant sent two more blasts at where Lung was, then shook his head before calling out to us. "He's got so much anger! I'm trying to calm him down, but it's like bailing a rowboat with a tablespoon. I need more time!"

It didn't look like time was something he was going to get. The massive beast of a criminal had already oriented back toward the boy who looked like an escapee from a science fiction King Arthur story and raised a hand to direct a fireball that way. Gallant barely managed to throw himself out of its path, and was prone on the ground when the man prepared a second volley.

"Hey stupid!" Some idiot called out.

He whirled, and I realized, _oh crap, the idiot is me._

Trying not to gulp too obviously, I waved a hand. "Lung, seriously? Who's your archenemy, the Marlboro Man?!"

A growl escaped the huge, armored man, and he pivoted to face me. I managed, somehow, to avoid wetting myself at my own success in getting his attention. Instead, I assumed a thinking position, tapping my head a few times as though considering. "Wait, wait, I've got it. Someone told you that lung cancer kills, and you were too stupid to realize that it was the **cancer** that was the deadly part."

By that point, Vista and Aegis were both staring at me like I was insane. I'm pretty sure they both took a step away from me as well. Not that I could blame them for that.

"Get him." I said to Aegis, pointing to Gallant. "And follow us so he can keep hitting the guy."

"Follow you where?" The leader of the Wards threw up his hands in confusion.

Lung was already throwing himself my way, so I extended a hand toward a nearby billboard and connected it to my glove while responding. "I dunno, is the opera in town?" The line yanked me off the ground and sent me flying back toward the billboard just as Lung landed where I had been even as I called back over my shoulder. "Because we could really use a fat lady!"

Just as I reached and landed on top of the advertisement for some local fast food place, Lung had gathered himself and then leapt after me with another bellow of rage. I gave him a quick wave, then connected one of my lines from the bottom of my boot to the billboard and shoved myself hard up and away from it. I went a dozen feet into the air and backwards, while Lung hurtled himself through the sign, leaving a hole behind.

Another line attached me to a passing car, and I let it haul me a good twenty feet through the air before finding a nearby building to latch onto with a separate line. This was followed rapidly by an elevated train track, a tall antennae, another car, and the statue in a nearby park that let me turn the corner there and propel myself down another side street.

Through it all, Lung kept chasing me, bellowing once in awhile. It was all I could do to stay out of the reach of his flames. My pants may have been fire retardant, but I didn't think they had rated them against a giant, screaming rage dragon when they made that notation. To say nothing of the rest of my so-called costume. Frankly, I wasn't sure it was going to survive all the sweating I was doing, let alone any actual hit from those flames.

Somewhere behind us, I occasionally caught glimpses of Aegis, carrying Gallant and trying to keep up while the other hero sent blast after blast of emotion changing energy into the enormous Lung. Again and again, he pelted the armored beast, trying to calm him down.

It was working. Lord help us all, but it was working, albeit slowly. Without a _direct_ target to actively fight, since I wasn't stupid enough to stand there and trade blows with the guy, Lung was gradually being affected by the emotion blasts. It was subtle, but he was definitely slowing slightly, and I thought I could see him getting smaller as we went on. It was also getting easier to stay ahead of him, and his flame blasts were coming further apart, and not traveling quite as far.

One blast after another, he was slowly losing his rage and thus his power. I was able to keep hauling myself just out of his reach, so he didn't have a direct fight to keep himself amped up against the calming blasts that Gallant was sending at him.

Finally, the man had shrunk so much he couldn't keep leaping after me. He fell, landing heavily on the top of a roof. I oriented myself to land on the edge of the same roof, while Aegis and Gallant came down on the other end, the latter sending several more blasts into Lung's now prone form, just to be sure.

Everyone, myself included, held our breaths as we watched the man. He shifted a little, clearly trying in vain to hold onto his anger. Then he slumped once more, falling flat to the roof before the sound of snoring reached us.

"Someone," Aegis's voice was soft, as though he was afraid of speaking too loud and waking Lung up. "Needs to get this guy locked in foam."

I hesitated before speaking up. "What about the people that he was attacking?" A glance down revealed that the red lines had disappeared, but I had to be sure.

It took Aegis a moment to answer, and from the tilt of his head, he was listening to someone else. Finally, he looked back at me. "They were villains, the Undersiders. Vista says Shadow Stalker pretty much sat on top of Grue, the guy in the skull helmet. So they've got him. Hellhound escaped with her dogs, Regent, the other guy, scrammed before we even got Lung's attention, and Tattletale was gone when they went to grab her."

So it had been a villain on villain fight. Still, from what I knew about the Undersiders, they didn't really deserve to die. Especially not in a fight against someone like Lung. And even if the idea of Sophia capturing anyone made my skin crawl, at least he had been a bad guy. And Vista had been there to stop the other girl from going too far on the unconscious Grue.

Still, it meant that this Regent, Hellhound, and Tattletale had escaped. I couldn't decide how I felt about that.

Before I could focus too much on it, Gallant took a step my way. He held a card toward me. "In case you change your mind, or just want to talk." I held a hand out, connecting a line to the card and my glove to pull it to me. Yeah, at that point I was showing off. Sue me.

"It's my Wards e-mail address and phone number." Gallant explained. "Keep in touch."

"He's right." Aegis added with a nod. "You did good-" He winked at the other boy. "-and well tonight. We could use someone like you. Even if you are insane."

_Then why do you keep someone like Sophia around?!_ I wanted to scream at them. Once again, Gallant gave a shudder, and looked like he was about to ask something.

I didn't give him the chance. Reaching a hand out toward another building, I replied as evenly as I could while the disgust rolled through me. "Yeah, maybe we can team up again sometime. Just put a giant spotlight with my symbol on it in the sky."

As I started to let the tether pull me away, Aegis called, "We don't know what your symbol is!"

"Good point!" I shouted back to him. "Make it giant laser letters across the sky that say, 'Totally Awesome Girl Who Kicked Lung's Ass'. That outta narrow it down for me!"

Then I was gone, letting the invisible line yank me out of their sight. Later, I would let myself fall down and start shaking from the shock of everything that had just happened, what I had survived.

But right now, right now I just wanted to close my eyes, let the wind rush over me as I rushed through the air, and remind myself that I really wasn't dead. I had survived my first night out, which had been much more eventful than I had expected.

Totally worth blowing off that 'how have capes affected the world' assignment from Mr. Gladly.

**Interlude 1 – Wards**

As soon as the tinker-made elevator doors slid open on the Wards level of the Brockton Bay Parahuman Response Division headquarters building, the red haired teenage boy who had been leaning against the wall next to them straightened with an eager grin. "Is it true?" He asked while the doors were still opening. "Did you really bring in Lung without any help from the adults? Man, I bet that made Armsmaster feel like a..."

"Feel like a what, Clockblocker?" Armsmaster, standing in his armored suit behind the line of the boy's teammates (a couple of whom had been attempting frantically to wave him off with muted hand gestures down at their waists).

"Uhhhhhhhhh..." Dennis's brain stalled for a moment as he stared with wide blue eyes at the leader of the local Protectorate. The man's visor hid the top half of his face, but his mouth was not exactly smiling. Then again, the man rarely smiled at all. "Feel like a... really good teacher." Dennis let his head bob up and down quickly. "I mean, if we're this good, you must be... like..." At a loss for words, he simply whistled appreciatively.

"You are such a retard." Shadow Stalker announced dismissively before namesaking her way past him to head for the security door entrance.

"You shouldn't say retard." Missy, Vista in the field, scolded as she emerged from the elevator along with a rather toasty looking Aegis, and Gallant.

Sophia, who was taking her mask off with one hand as she walked to the door, used her other hand to flip the younger girl off. Then she leaned in toward the security terminal and let the retinal scanner read her eye before the steel doors slid aside.

It was, Dennis noted, probably better than a rectal scanner. The damn thing wouldn't have been able to get a clear reading past the enormous stick his teammate had jammed up there.

At a gesture from Armsmaster, the rest of the group made their way through the doors as well. They joined Sophia, who had already tossed mask and crossbows aside, and was giving the heavy punching bag a once over in the corner, and Chris/Kid Win, who was still watching the monitors.

"Debriefing time?" Chris asked, spinning his chair away from the console.

Nodding, Armsmaster gestured to the other chairs. "Everybody take a seat. Let's figure out what just happened." When Sophia continued to attack the bag, he cleared his throat until she finally relented and stalked over to one of the seats.

"So like I was saying," Dennis, turning one of the chairs around so that he could sit on it the wrong way, interrupted. "Did you really bring in Lung?"

"Lung is in custody, along with Grue from the Undersiders." Gallant confirmed with a nod, prompting a pair of whoops from the two Wards members who hadn't been there.

Aegis/Carlos, who had removed his helmet and the ruined top half of his costume, stood nearby while gingerly testing the burns on his skin. His power, which made him all but unkillable by granting him numerous backup organs as well as making other organs take over the processes of ones that had been damaged, would also eventually heal what had been done by the burns. "We didn't do it alone."

Sophia made a disparaging noise and folded her arms. "Practically."

Ignoring her, Armsmaster looked at Aegis. "That's what I want to talk about. Tell me everything that happened, and everything you know about this girl."

"Girl?" Chris spoke up, interestedly. "What girl?"

"She called herself Tether." Gallant/Dean offered, glancing toward Sophia for some reason. "I got the impression this was her first time out."

"Makes sense." Armsmaster agreed. "We haven't heard anything about her until tonight. Powers?"

Carlos and Dean glanced toward one another for a moment, and it was Missy who spoke. "Telekinesis?" She sounded unsure.

"Really?" Dennis was interested now. "Like, full scale tk?"

"We're not exactly sure on that." Dean admitted.

Missy, clearly excited by the idea of another potential girl in the group besides herself and Cranky Pants, put in, "She could fly."

Carlos hesitated once more. "She wasn't... exactly flying. She was more... gliding or swinging. Or..."

"It was almost like a zipline thing." Dean offered a little helplessly. "She'd point at something and a second later, it was like her arm was being pulled that way."

"Maybe an invisible telekinetic servant force of some kind, that follows her directive to carry her around." Armsmaster considered. "Like the boy in Chicago who transforms himself into a telekinetic whirlwind."

Rather than continue to speculate blindly, Gallant moved to the console. "I took some pictures with my helmet cam."

"Because that's not creepy at all." Dennis muttered under his breath.

Where most of his teammates would have given him the evil eye, Dean just laughed. "I thought everyone else might like to know what she looks like, for future reference." He ran his fingers over the keyboard after plugging his helmet's computer in, then straightened away from it as the image of the girl in question standing on the roof after Lung had been brought down came onto the screen.

"Cheap costume." Armsmaster observed clinically. "So she's not a tinker, and she's working alone, most likely."

"This was when she left." Gallant advanced the pictures through a short series of slides that showed the girl stretch an arm out, then let herself be pulled along seemingly by the hand.

"Looks a bit like Spider-Man's webswinging to me." Armsmaster, arms folded as he watched the screen, put in.

The Wards stared at him blankly. Chris offered, "Spider-Who?"

"Eww." Missy shuddered. "Is there really a spider-themed cape out there?"

Armsmaster looked a bit affronted and taken aback. "No, Spider-Man. It was a... you know what, never mind. It's before your time. Before real super powers. Comic books." With the advent of real life super heroes whose exploits and stories people could follow, the fictional variety had fallen out style before any of the current Wards had been born.

"Well, she's definitely being pulled by something." Dennis pointed to the picture on the screen. "See how her glove is straining forward, pulling the rest of her along after it?"

Carlos nodded, rubbing his own shoulder. "I'm surprised one of her arms didn't get ripped out of its socket, the way she was throwing herself around in the air."

Examining the picture for himself, Armsmaster nodded. "So, likely a minor breaker ability, keeping herself in one piece when she swings around like that. We'll note it as a Breaker level one for now, and for the telekinesis or... whatever it is, a tentative Shaker level five or six until we have a better idea of what exactly she's doing with it. Any idea on strength level for it?"

Dean answered, "She tore the lid off a fire hydrant pretty easily with it. And Vista said that she was able to control two of the men who attacked Sophia into beating themselves up."

"Body control?" Armsmaster grimaced.

Missy shrugged helplessly. "That's sort of what it looked like from where I was. One of the guys just punched the other one in the face, then he hit himself in the umm... yeah." She gestured vaguely, and every male in the room blanched.

"Shaker Six, Breaker One. Anything else?" Armsmaster prompted.

It was Carlos who responded, after he, Dean, and Missy looked at one another. "She... knew that the Undersiders were in danger."

Frowning, Armsmaster shook his head. "Come again?"

"It's true." Missy offered. "She said that three people were going to die if we didn't follow her, then she just jumped away. And when we got there, Lung was about to kill the Undersiders."

"There's four Undersiders." Chris pointed out mildly.

"Regent ran away." Sophia finally put in, her mouth twisted in a contemptuous smirk. "Coward."

"That's three." Armsmaster said slowly, looking to them. "She really said three, specifically?"

They nodded. Dean added, "It was like something told her they were in trouble. Not who, more like... a direction and a warning."

Considering that, Armsmaster shook his head. "A Thinker ability that tells her when people nearby are in trouble. Maybe that's how she found Shadow Stalker."

Sophia bristled at that. "I could have taken those guys."

Dennis grinned at the volatile girl. "Sure, I bet you were really luring them in with that whole 'sprawled out on the ground, totally helpless while the bad guys stand over you with weapons' routine."

Growling, Sophia half rose from her seat. "Look you stupid little-"

Armsmaster swung his halberd off his shoulder and put it in front of the girl. "Are we about to have a problem?"

Freezing as the weapon was placed in her way, Sophia frowned for a moment, then used her power to slide backwards through her own chair before straightening. "Whatever," she muttered. "I need a shower. Let me know when you're done gushing over some stupid wannabe."

Rather than object to the girl leaving, Armsmaster continued the debriefing. "Some death sense or something. Seems to be rather short range and short warning, so we'll call it Thinker Two, since it does involve some small measure of future sense."

Chris whistled low. "Shaker Six, Breaker One, Thinker Two. We could use her."

Missy was nodding emphatically. "Especially since she's a girl. This must be the only city in the country where the boys outnumber the girls so much in the Wards." It was a well known, if little understood fact that more females ended up triggering than males.

"Did you make the offer?" Armsmaster asked them.

Carlos shrugged helplessly, wincing a little at the pain the gesture caused his burned body. "Of course we did. It didn't really help. We might as well have spat on her food and tried to sell it back to her, for how she reacted."

Frowning, Armsmaster gazed at the boy. "Her outfit looks that cheaply made, she's got some kind of sense that spurs her to help people in trouble, and she still turned down an offer to join the Wards? That doesn't sound right."

Straightening from his seat, Dean took a step back and gazed after the way that Sophia had gone, before speaking up. "Sir, I don't think she was reacting to the idea of the Wards in general."

Having followed the course of the boy's gaze, Armsmaster looked that way as well. "Explain."

"I felt disgust, contempt, and confusion whenever we brought up joining us." Dean continued after a moment. "Loads of it. But there was also the same feeling whenever she looked at Shadow Stalker."

Missy raised her hand before speaking up. "I don't think she knew who she was saving at first. When she found out, it looked like she was taunting Sophia, goading and insulting her. Sophia was going to attack her before we showed up."

"Sounds like she has a history with Shadow Stalker." Armsmaster mused.

"Maybe a classmate?" Chris put in from his own seat.

The Protectorate hero considered that for a moment before shaking his head. "Probably not. Shadow Stalker was masked the whole time, and you said this Tether reacted badly the second she saw who it was. No, my guess is that she's someone Stalker has a history with in costume."

Aegis grimaced. "Didn't Sophia have that whole 'don't save someone unless they stand up for themselves' thing before she joined us? Maybe Tether's one of those."

Armsmaster nodded. "That's my guess. Try looking into the last six months of information we have about people that Shadow Stalker was involved with."

"Before or after she joined up?" Chris asked.

The man hesitated, then sighed. "Both. She says she's being better, but we should look into her... 'rescuees' either way. Whoever this Tether is, I would bet that she's one of the girls that Shadow Stalker either refused to help, or helped too late."

Once he had nods from everyone, Armsmaster went on. "Now, let's talk about how your group is going to track down the other three Undersiders before they have time to regroup and rescue their leader..."


	2. Arc 2: Rise

**2.01**

"Did you hear about the Undersiders hitting the bank yesterday?"

It was a few days after I'd helped bring Lung down. I wasn't the one being spoken to. I wasn't even involved in the conversation. Instead, I was standing just around the corner from the group of lockers where, up until a few months earlier, Sophia, Emma, and I had all held court. Ever since things had gone downhill on that front, I tried to avoid being there when the others were. Sometimes it worked, other times it didn't. This was one of the days that I had heard them before coming around the corner.

It was lunchtime, so if I stood here and waited long enough, they'd head out for one of the nearby fast food junk places.

Sophia's contempt and annoyance was audible even from where I stood. "I heard."

On the other hand, I hadn't heard a thing about the middle-of-the-day bank robbery until yesterday evening. I was rather annoyed to admit that I'd been napping through the lunch hour in the school library at the time.

One of the several interchangeable hangers-on that were still vying for a permanent place in my old spot spoke up then. "Weren't they supposed to go quiet when the Wards caught their leader?"

"The Wards and that new girl." Another contestant for the third Queen Bee slot pointed out. "Someone on Twitter said that she did most of the work."

_Welp._ I thought to myself. _There goes all that progress she was making to take my place. Poor thing._

The way the locker slammed a second later seemed to verify my assumption, and in the brief silence that followed, I could easily picture the glare that Sophia was sending at the other girl. Her words were terse. "I read about it. She didn't do that much."

Emma, loyal little lapdog that she was, quickly jumped in. "Anyway, the Wards weren't even at full strength when they tried to stop the Undersiders. They left Shadow Stalker behind." I could imagine the glance for approval that she was giving toward Sophia before she went on. "That's why they lost."

It was a boy who spoke next, one of several who had been orbiting Sophia angling for the best opportunity to ask her to the next dance. "Might have something to do with their new members."

New members? I perked up, interested now. I hadn't had a chance to read very much about what had happened. Did the Undersiders somehow recruit people after they lost their leader.

The girl whose stock with Sophia was clearly plummeting jumped on that. "I heard that one of them was Browbeat."

"Yeah, what the hell's up with that?" The boy replied. "I thought Browbeat was a good guy. Independent, but a good guy."

Another girl gave a little laugh. "I guess he decided being a villain paid more. Because that was definitely Browbeat helping the Undersiders with the bank job."

"Who cares about that?" One of the boys wanted to know. "I'm more interested in that girl with Clockblocker's power. Who was she?"

It was Emma who answered. "She was calling herself Freezetag. And it's not exactly Clockblocker's power. It sounds like when she touches someone, you like... can't move until someone else touches you."

The boy asked blankly, "How is that different from Clockster?"

Emma, sounding annoyed, explained. "Because Clockblocker freezes people and things in time. This Freezetag chick just makes it so you can't move. After it was over, people were saying that they could still see things and look around with their eyes, or blink, even talk if they didn't move their lips very much. They just couldn't move their bodies. And it wore off as soon as someone else touched them."

So we'd taken Grue away from the Undersiders, and they had responded by adding two members to their ranks; the super-strong Browbeat, and some girl named Freezetag who could lock people in place.

Not exactly a net loss on their part, especially if they eventually managed to rescue their leader with the help of their new members to top everything off.

While I was pondering that, I heard Emma complain, "That really, really stinks."

Someone else laughed before asking, "Do you think she's seen it yet?"

"No." There was almost palpable smugness in Sophia's voice. "She hasn't seen it yet."

Oh, great. Something else to deal with. What had they done now? I considered just turning around and walking the other way. But I needed some of the stuff out of my locker, including the book I'd been reading. It was stupid, leaving anything in my locker. Taylor had learned better than that early on.

I sighed. Obviously the reason the group had obviously been stalling was that they were waiting for me so they could see my reaction to whatever they had planned.

Well screw that. Sophia may be convinced that I was _prey_ in her fucked up mindset, but it was obvious that she should've failed biology, because there were plenty of so-called 'prey' animals that were dangerous as hell when you pushed them the wrong way.

Risking a peek around the corner, I saw Sophia standing there with a soda bottle in one hand, accompanied by the model-perfect Emma and surrounded by their lackeys and entourage. I could also see my locker just beyond, but I couldn't tell what they had done to it from there.

I had resolved not to use my power at school, but in this case, I was ready to make an exception. The last several days since 'Tether' had humiliated Sophia had been rough. She'd had no idea that it was me, of course, but she had still clearly been working out her frustration. Whatever this was clearly stemmed from that as well.

As Sophia started to raise the bottle so that she could twist the cap off, I focused on it. Connecting a line from the inside of the cap to the bottom of the bottle, I held it in place, generating just enough of a pull that the other girl's first few attempts to pull the lid off were futile.

I let her get just frustrated enough to yank hard at the bottle, then released it. At the same time, I connected a line from the back of her shirt to my locker. When she stumbled off balance from the sudden release, I gave the slightest of tugs with the second line so that she was drawn backwards against the locker in a way that would hopefully seem completely natural. Then, once she hit the locker, I connected a line from my locker door to the floor and gave just enough of a yank to make it pop open. In the end, it would look like she had strained to open the soda cap, stumbled when it abruptly gave way, hit my locker, and the door had accidentally popped open.

Even though I had guessed that they'd done _something_ to my locker, I couldn't have expected what came next. The second the locker opened, a veritable explosion of brown and green **stuff** collapsed from within. It fell all over Sophia, coating her dark skin, and getting into her hair and clothes while she screeched in surprise.

The stench reached me just as everyone else recoiled in disgust. Manure. They had loaded my locker completely full of manure so that when I opened it, the shit would fall out all over me.

_Yeah, screw you, Sophia._

A couple of the guys started to laugh, and were instantly silenced by the now-manure covered girl's death glare. She shook herself off frantically, then whirled on Emma. "I thought you said you closed that thing!"

Emma's eyes were wide as she waved at her nose desperately. "I did! It was! I mean... I mean it should've been."

Most of the group decided to take off then, making the excuse that they were going to miss lunch completely if they didn't get going. A few wandered off another way, saying they weren't hungry after all that. Sophia was left with just Emma and a few of the most desperate girls as she kicked my locker door hard enough to dent it in a little, then stomped off down the hall toward the restroom.

Once they were gone, I decided to see how much damage had been done. Trying to hold my nose, I gradually made my way out to the locker and then sighed. There was so much manure piled up in the locker and on the floor around it that I could barely understand how they had closed the door to begin with.

Gingerly, I stepped closer and tried to peer into the locker. As I was assessing how much damage had been done, someone spoke up from behind me.

"Wow, that really reeks."

Rolling my eyes, I started to turn around. "Yeah, I get it. You guys are soooo clever. I'm amazed by your..."

I had to trail off, because the boy who stood behind me wasn't one of Sophia's lackeys. In fact, I didn't recognize him at all. He was a sort of gangly boy with red hair and thin lips, who looked taken aback when I whirled on him.

"Sorry." I managed. "I thought you were... someone else."

The red head boy gave an easy smile at that. "That figures. Girls are always looking for somebody else." He extended a hand. "Dennis."

I hesitated, raising an eyebrow before slowly accepting his handshake. "Madison."

Leaning slightly to look past me at the manure, Dennis asked, "Not a science project gone wrong, then?"

I snorted, shaking my head. "More like a disagreement with someone who really doesn't like people disagreeing with her."

"I know the type." The boy replied, then looked around. "Where's the janitor? If this happened at Arcadia, there'd already be someone shining the floor."

Right, he was from Arcadia, the **good** high school. So what the hell was he doing here? I shrugged at the question. "Probably outside smoking a joint." Then I blinked with exaggerated confusion and innocent. "Wait, isn't that what janitors are supposed to do? I knew there was a reason I failed that vocational questionnaire."

He made a noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a choke of disbelief, shaking his head briefly before blinking past me. "What—awww no." Reaching out, he tugged a paperback book out from under the mess in my locker. It was ruined. "You're reading the Seventh Reach series?"

I flushed a little bit. I hadn't really been much of a reader before everything that had happened. But Taylor had been, and I was trying to do a few of the things that she would have done, sort of in her memory. I had also been interested in the series because it was an odd mixture of post apocalyptic and steam-punk, and the main character used a grappling hook device that had given me a few ideas about my own powers.

"Yeah." I muttered. "Or I **was** reading it. But I was only halfway through that one, and now the librarian's gonna flip the fuck out. She's not gonna let me even look at the rest of them cross eyed, let alone check any out."

"I've got the series." Dennis replied easily. "I'll let you borrow them sometime."

I blinked at that. "You don't even know me."

"Sure I do." The boy replied cheerfully. "You're Madison. I'm Dennis." His voice lowered to a whisper. "You may have forgotten, but we met."

I couldn't help it. I giggled, then coughed. "Well how will you know where to bring the books?"

His answer was to wave his phone in my face. "You got a phone number?"

"Wow." I winked at him. "You have a really convoluted way of getting a girl's phone number."

He nodded sagely. "Wait for their locker to be filled with manure, swoop in and find a common interest, then offer to share that interest with them." His hand formed a thumbs up sign. "One hundred percent success rate so far."

I snickered in spite of myself, and gave him my phone number, collecting his in exchange. Just as we finished that, I heard Sophia's voice. "What the hell are you doing here?"

Turning that way, I started to speak, but Dennis responded first. "Looking for you."

He was looking for Sophia? Huh? Wait. Did that mean... I gave Dennis what I hoped was a subtle examination. There was only one reason that I could think of for any of the Arcadia students, the school almost every single Ward was **known** to attend, to come here looking for Sophia.

The boy went on. "The..." He glanced at me, then continued a little awkwardly. "... boss wants all hands on deck for the... project today." To me, Dennis added, "Sorry, after school job."

"What project?" Sophia demanded. She had washed her hair out and changed clothes. I wasn't sure where the new clothes had come from. But there was still clearly a faint odor.

Coughing, Dennis shrugged. "You know, the uhh... Grue...some one we were talking about."

_Oh my god, Sophia._ I wanted to blurt. _Get a clue. They're moving Grue and need all the Wards to make sure the Undersiders don't try anything._

Finally getting it, Sophia gave me a dark look before shoving past. "I see you started keeping something useful in your locker, Mads. You're going to get so much further with that than you would with any textbooks."

Then she was gone, and Dennis shook his head and sighed before starting to follow her. "Like I said," He called back to me. "I'll give you a call about those books. See you soon."

I waited for them to go, then started to walk out as well, abandoning the mess on the floor. _Maybe you'll see me sooner than you think._ I thought silently. _Because if the Undersiders do try to rescue Grue, I'm not missing it this time._

**2.02**

Having the first hand experience that I did in the way that Sophia's mind worked when she was focused on making someone's life miserable, there had been no way that I was going to keep my costume (such as it was) in my locker or my backpack. It would have taken her or Emma roughly six seconds to find it.

Instead, I had stored the clothes in a small garment bag, and stashed that on the roof of the school in an out of the way corner in between the raised edge of the roof and an air conditioning unit. The corner spot there had been so full of trash that I was certain my bag would go unnoticed. Plus, the upside of my cheap little costume was that if anyone did take it, I was out something like twenty-three bucks.

It was a simple matter to grab the bag, check for anyone watching, and change. I was done and ready within three minutes from when Dennis and Sophia had left the school.

Thankfully, I didn't have to go hunting for them. That could have taken forever, if I ever found them at all. But while I'd been changing, I had used my vantage point on the roof to watch the parking lot. There was a large, full sized white van with heavily tinted windows at the edge of the school parking lot. Which meant it was either government issue, or a pervert. And considering it had been parked for longer than four seconds without being surrounded by a SWAT team, I was guessing government.

Well, that and the fact that I'd seen Dennis and Sophia cross the lot at a jog to reach it. That helped too.

By the time that the van was on its way out of the lot, I was ready. Letting it pull ahead and onto the road, I focused on a traffic light a bit to the east of it. A moment later, I was airborn, being pulled toward the light. Before I reached it, I adjusted, attaching a different line between my other glove and the roof of a building next to the light.

I traveled that way, staying out of the way of the van but always keeping it within view. I pulled myself from rooftop to rooftop, occasionally using a boosted jump to reach the next building by planting lines against my feet and shoving off with them. I was starting to get the hang of it, as the action became more natural each time I did it.

Eventually, the van pulled into the back lot of the PRT headquarters and stopped. I perched on the edge of the roof across the street, watching the lot. The van backed into a spot, and then a half dozen costumed Wards spilled out of it. In addition to Sophia, I could see Aegis, Vista, Clockblocker, Kid Win, and Gallant. All of them were in costume by that point.

For a moment, I wondered which one Dennis was. I was pretty sure he wasn't Aegis, because what little skin of his I'd seen past his damaged costume that hadn't been burned black by Lung had been too dark to match the boy that I'd met in the school. And he probably wasn't Kid Win, since Dennis's hair was red, not brown. Unless that was a really good disguise. He could be Clockblocker or Gallant though.

Shaking off the question, I focused once more, watching the security guard by the gate as well as the Wards themselves. The latter were all turned toward one of the building exits, and the second that I saw the gate guard turn to look the other way down the street, I leapt off of the roof and attached a line to the pavement just in front of the van. Yanking myself that way as quickly as I dared to, I hit the ground right at the bumper, dropped into a roll, and slid under the van as quietly and smoothly as I could. Then I waited for shouts or demands that would indicate that I'd been seen. When none came, I let out the breath that I'd been holding and made myself lay flat under the vehicle for a moment to catch my breath.

Before I could be noticed laying there, I focused on the underside of the van, connecting lines from both of my boots, my pants, my belt, and my gloves to the van itself. Then I hauled the lines in a bit to lift myself off the ground and let myself hang there, barely an inch or two from the bottom of the vehicle.

Spinning myself around to face the rear, I focused on what I could hear from the Wards.

"How long until they bring him out?" I thought that was Kid Win talking.

"They're on the way, just doing the transfer paperwork." Someone else, probably Aegis from the sound of it, replied.

"Next question." The boy that I thought was Kid went on. "Is there any chance we could drive through a car wash on the way and roll the windows down? Because I can still smell whatever Stalker had on her."

There was a growl that I was, by then, familiar with. "Shut the fuck up, Kid. I had things to deal with."

"What kind of things involve manure?" Kid Win started to ask.

Rather than Sophia, it was someone else's voice I heard next. It sounded a bit like Dennis, but I wasn't one hundred percent on that. "Heads up, it's Miss Piggy."

Footsteps approached the van, and then I heard a woman's voice. "Shadow Stalker. Walk with me for a moment while we discuss why you should have your phone on you at all times."

"I was washing shit out of my hair!" Sophia protested. When no audible response came, she sighed and walked. I heard both sets of footsteps walking away.

"Pretty sure she put the manure there." A voice that I guessed had to be Dennis said in a low tone then.

"Where?" That was definitely Aegis.

"In another girl's locker." Dennis replied. "You should've seen it, the crap was everywhere. It was... it was fucked up."

"What makes you think she put it there?" Someone else asked. It was either Gallant or Clockblocker, whichever one Dennis wasn't. The muffled effect from their armor and mask, respectively, were somewhat similar.

"You mean besides the fact that she had it all over herself?" Dennis sounded annoyed. Really annoyed. "You weren't there. You didn't see the way she talked to this girl. Just... rude remarks, something stupid and petty about Madison getting further with that crap than books."

I could hear the raised eyebrow as Aegis prodded, "Madison, huh? You got the girl's name?"

"We were talking for a minute." Dennis replied. "And I'm pretty sure it's not the first time Stalker messed with her. It seemed too... routine."

There was a pause, before the person who was either Gallant or Clockblocker spoke up. "Wait, you said there was manure in her locker?"

"Tons of it." Dennis confirmed. "Top to bottom. It was all over the floor too, where the locker door opened." He hesitated, then asked, "Why?"

The other boy was quiet for a moment before speaking. "I'm just trying to remember... wasn't there something about a girl in a locker at Winslow awhile back?"

Vista was the one who spoke next, her own voice clearly distinctive. "Hey, yeah. That was in... December? A girl died when she was trapped in her locker. They said it was an accident."

All of the Wards were quiet for several moments then. I held my breath until Aegis spoke. "Kid?"

"Yeah." The tinker-hero replied softly.

"Look up that girl who died when we get done here. Find out if she had any history with Shadow Stalker."

Kid Win's response came a second later. "What if she did?"

When Aegis responded, his own voice sounded hard. "Then we'll deal with it."

Silence had returned by the time that Sophia walked back from her apparent chewing out from Director Piggot, the leader of the PRT in the Brockton Bay area. "Yeah well, fuck you too, bitch." She was muttering. "Let's see you strap your fat ass into a pair of tights and go fight scumbags." She addressed her team then. "Can you believe that? Seriously, she gave me a _warning_ for missing a couple texts."

Dennis's reply was as smooth as it was immediate. "Yeah, well, _shit happens_."

No one else responded to that, and a moment later there was more movement as two PRT guards approached. From my position, it looked like they were carrying an unconscious form between them. Grue, no doubt.

The slumbering prisoner was loaded into the back of the van, and then the Wards and both guards boarded as well. All save for Kid Win, who said he was going to scout from the sky on his hoverboard before taking off.

And then the van was moving out of the lot. My lines kept me attached to the bottom of the vehicle, just as though I was strapped to it. I tried not to think about how bad it would be if the lines failed while we were driving.

We picked up speed as the van headed toward wherever they were moving Grue. I shifted a little and looked out at the other passing cars. Was this their plan, to move the Undersider leader in an unmarked vehicle without any obvious escort except for Kid Win up somewhere on his board?

A few minutes later, we were passing under a freeway overpass, when at least five red lines popped up, going straight above me and into the van. None of them were quite black, thank Scion, just a medium red that seemed to indicate a moderate to severe injury.

For a brief second, I froze. Then I twisted, extending a hand behind us while muttering, "Please work, please work, please work..." Cringing in worry, I attached a line from the back of the van to the pavement. Rather than jerking the van to instant stop and thus creating my own injuries, I exerted just enough pressure while bracing myself to make the vehicle slow dramatically before halting it only slightly more roughly than slamming on the brakes would have accomplished.

Barely an instant after I had the van stopped, I heard a terrifying crash from ahead of us, followed by a roar. Twisting back that way and dropping to the ground beneath the stopped van, I saw one of those giant dog-monsters had just landed hard in the middle of the street at the other end of the overpass. If we had kept going, the dog would have landed on the front of the van and no doubt would have flipped it over. Hellhound was riding the thing.

Already, people were abandoning their vehicles, rushing to escape the oncoming parahuman conflict. The two armed guards had emerged as well, and began to take up position with their foam-casting weapons raised toward the snarling beast that had almost wrecked the van. Before they could fire, both men abruptly pointed their weapons straight down. The resulting foam instantly encased the pair up to the middle of their chests before hardening.

The question of what had just happened was answered with another roar from the opposite end of the overpass as a second dog came charging up toward the back of the van. I could see two figures on the monster, that escapee from the Ren Faire that had to be Regent, and the rather massively muscled figure in black spandex that I figured was Browbeat.

The van doors opened on all sides, and the Wards were out and ready by the time the dog reached them. I saw the bottom of Gallant's armor as he stopped next to the van. A second later, Regent waved that scepter of his, and the subsequent blast from Gallant went careening off course as his aim was adjusted.

Before the rest of the Wards could engage, the dog from the front end that had been trying to flip the van came charging in to join the fray, and it wasn't alone. There was a third dog, this one carrying the girl in the purple and black costume from before, and a second, smaller female form. I didn't have much of a chance to see her, but the new girl was obviously Freezetag. It looked like she was wearing a simple 'costume' of black pants, black leather jacket with the image of a hand-print across the front in red, and a dark colored mask with a similar hand symbol, this one stylized as though the hand had been raised to smack someone. It was clearly a rushed costume, almost like my own, and it made me wonder just how long ago this Freezetag had triggered. She had just barely joined the Undersiders in the few days between the night of Grue's capture and the bank robbery.

Browbeat leapt off the charging monster, slamming into the ground at the back of the van. He started to grab for the doors, but the rushing form of Aegis caught the abnormally muscled boy and flew up into the sidewall with him.

I rolled out from under the vehicle finally, coming up on one knee just in time to see Regent abandon his own mount. The mutated animal came charging toward Clockblocker, who had been focused on the incoming Tattletale, Hellhound, and Freezetag.

"Clock!" I called out in spite of myself. He spun, looked at me in confusion, and then noticed the charging dog. He wasn't going to be able to get out of the way in time. I pointed to the nearest unoccupied car, latched a line from it to the opposite wall, and **yanked**. The car jerked off the ground, flew through the air, and crashed into the dog as it passed through that space, knocking it sideways and into the wall with a yelp.

"What the fuck are you doing here?!" Sophia demanded, briefly distracted from where she had been using her crossbow to sight in on Hellhound.

I looked at her, then at the surrounding fight, then tilted my head sideways, exaggerating each motion heavily. "Wait, isn't this where we're setting up the Farmer's Market this weekend? I brought potatoes!"

She snarled at me and sent two bolts toward one of the Undersiders. "Stop fucking joking, retard."

"Who's joking?" I asked, planting a line against the car that I had thrown against the onrushing dog and using it to hold the animal in place as it struggled to push away from the wall that it had careened into. "I take my potatoes very seriously, I'll have you know."

Those crossbows were pointed my way for just a second before Clockblocker put himself in the way, pointing. "Focus, Stalker. On the _bad guys_." He was right. Aegis was struggling with one of the dogs that I hadn't pinned, while Gallant was focused on keeping Browbeat and Regent away from the doors. Vista seemed to be occupying Freezetag. Kid Win hadn't arrived yet.

"Oh you don't have to do that." A new voice spoke up. I turned to see the blonde girl in the purple and black costume with the simple domino mask. Tattletale. "We could find what we need without your help. Just browsing, thanks."

Sophia made a derisive, dismissive noise and pointed her crossbow, but the blonde girl raised a hand. In the background, the fight was still going on. But Sophia, Clockblocker, Tattletale, and I were a few steps away from the action. The female Undersider was pointing at me. "You're new." Her eyes behind the mask were bright with mischief as she gave a smile that reminded me of the stereotypical cunning fox. "But not... that new." Her eyes moved from me to Sophia, and then she laughed. "Really? Oh that's rich. That's just great."

Then she stopped laughing. Her head tilted toward Sophia, and when she spoke this time, there was no humor in her voice at all. "Oh. You are such a cunt."

Sophia raised her crossbow once more, her form turning wispy as she did so. A bare second later, she was covered in a cloud of darkness. Grue was awake.

A bolt from the crossbow shot out of the cloud, catching Tattletale in the arm. In the same moment, the blonde girl produced a handgun from behind her back with the other hand, pointed, and shot several times into the cloud before I managed to pull the gun away

**2.03**

_**BANG BANG BANG... BANG**_

The gunfire, three quick shots, followed by a very brief pause and then a fourth shot, shocked me for just a second. My thoughts derailed, my focus plummeting as I reflexively recoiled. Seriously, gunshots are fucking loud. Being that close when four of them went off right in a row left me wanting to cower until the deafness went away. At some point I was going to have to see about hearing protection if I was going to be around gunfire.

Eesh, that was a scary thought.

Somehow, I managed to find the focus to attach a line to the end of Tattletale's gun and wall, yanking it away from her a moment before the girl slumped, the tranquilizer bolt bringing her to the ground. Only then did the motion out of the corner of my eye catch my attention. Vista. The last gunshot had hit the van that the younger hero was next to, forcing her to dive out of the way.

In the middle of shooting, Tattletale had realized that Shadow Stalker had jumped into her shadow state, and adjusted her aim for the last shot to to send a bullet _toward_, but not _at_, Vista, just enough to startle the girl. It hadn't been enough to trigger my warning line since Vista was never actually in danger.

That also brought up the question of why there hadn't been a warning about Sophia being shot at, unless it had somehow known that she wasn't in danger anyway? I shook off the confusion as the girl in question hurled herself out of Grue's cloud of darkness, looking furious but otherwise unhurt.

At that same moment, I realized why Tattletale had wanted to distract Vista. Doing so had given Freezetag a chance to get around her, and the newer villain took immediate advantage of the freedom by lunging forward toward Sophia, who shifted back into her intangible form. In spite of that, when Freezetag swiped a hand through her ghostly figure, Sophia froze in place. The hand-masked girl let out a mocking cackle before backpedaling to avoid Clockblocker's counter-touch. For a moment, the two of them circled each other. Then the girl abruptly dropped to the ground just as Clock reached for her. Doing so gave Regent a direct line of sight to him, and the other boy twitched his scepter. Clockblocker's hand went off target, and he accidentally froze his own costume, locking himself in place and prompting another cackle from Freezetag before I planted a line against her costume and hurled her away from us.

Then I heard laser fire somewhere off on the other side of the van where Aegis still was, announcing the arrival of Kid Win. Which, yay, but the sound of tearing metal reminded me of another problem. My distraction from the earlier gunshots meant that I'd lost focus on the line that had been pinning the car, and subsequently the dog that the car had been shoving against, into the wall. Freed, the giant monster took a savage bite out of the bumper of the vehicle that had been pinning it, then bounded forward. I stretched a hand out and tied another line between the damaged car and the opposite wall, trying to duplicate the earlier trick. Unfortunately, the animal had learned its lesson, and it leapt up and over the passing car, letting it slam into the wall ineffectually. As the dog came down, it slammed its muzzle into Gallant, propelling the armored hero into the same car that I had just made total itself against the wall.

Connecting another line from the nearest thing I could see, one of the doors that had fallen off the wrecked car as the dog had been struggling with it, to a spot just past the animal, I sent it flying. The door smacked into the dog, briefly distracting it away from Gallant.

That prompted a shout. "That's my dog, asshole!" The third of the giant dogs, the one carrying Hellhound, was rushing toward me at a command from his master. Apparently, she was upset about my beaning her pet with the car door.

"Damn, really?" I asked while stretching a hand up to the roof of the overpass, using a line to yank myself up and out of the animal's path. "I could've sworn it was mine. Have you seen another two thousand pound Labrador around here? Answers to the name of-" I made a noise as close to the cartoon Tasmanian Devil's snarl as I could.

Before Hellhound could readjust, I sent another line to propel myself to the roof of the van. One of my dangerous red lines appeared then, pointing back toward Gallant, who was still struggling with the dog that was trying to use him as a chew toy. Pivoting, I put a line against the injured hero and yanked him away from the animal before anything worse could happen.

Something rocked the van, and I looked just in time to see Browbeat yank the back door off before leaning in. There was the sound of tearing metal, and when he leaned out again, shattered restraints that had obviously been on the prisoner were in his hand. I put a line against the back of his costume and used it to yank him away from the vehicle, but it was too late.

Grue emerged from the van. He twisted around to look at me, and I had a moment to wonder why they hadn't unmasked him. That was a question I'd had for a while, actually. Why did they _sometimes_ unmask and identify villain capes once they were caught, but not always?

As soon as I saw him, I attempted to plant another line on him. He was faster though, and the next thing I knew, I was engulfed in one of his clouds of darkness.

The blackness was total. I couldn't see or hear anything through it, which meant that I couldn't plant any lines outside of it. The sensation was incredibly disorienting, making me feel briefly adrift and lost. I even tried planting lines against my feet, which I'd done without looking before, to no effect. I tried feeling my way off the van carefully, only to misjudge and fall rather awkwardly onto my side as I stepped too far. Crying out and finally hearing my own voice now that I was out of the darkness, and the deafness from the gunshots had worn off, I rolled over to see what was happening.

The Undersiders were leaving. The two dogs who weren't carrying Hellhound had already been loaded up, one with Freezetag and Grue, while the second held Regent, Browbeat, and the unconscious Tattletale. Gallant was still recovering, Vista had apparently been frozen, and Aegis was looking pretty torn up as Bitch's dog snapped at him. Kid Win, meanwhile, was trying to shoot after the departing dogs, but Regent kept throwing off his aim by twitching his hand back and forth. Finally, another twitch of Regent's scepter sent Kid's flying board careening into the wall.

I used a line to pull myself after the running dogs, to the other side of the overpass tunnel and tried to plant another couple of lines against two of the Undersiders, but the second I did, Grue threw up a cloud of darkness in between us, cutting off my line of sight and erasing the lines.

Finally, Clockblocker's power that had frozen his uniform and trapped him seemed to run out, because he was moving again, coming up behind Hellhound's mount. She noticed him, spinning her dog around to leap over his head and rush after the others.

That left, well, me. I was the only one standing between Hellhound and the exit. Gulping as the massive animal raced toward me, eating up the distance in seconds, I braced myself and extended a hand... then focused on the line that I had attached between my own outstretched hand and Clockblocker. He was yanked off his feet and brought hurtling toward me faster than the dog could run. His squeal of surprise reached me and I winced, slowing him down as much as I could just before he hit the dog, depositing him right on the back of the thing and behind the rider.

That done barely seconds before the dog would run me over, I recoiled and closed my eyes, holding my breath.

One second, then two passed. Then I opened my eyes and looked up, squeaking a little at the sight of the massive animal's teeth, so close to me that if it hadn't been frozen in time, I probably would have been able to smell its breath.

"Hey there." Clockblocker, Dennis, was saying as he dropped from the frozen animal's back. "You know, for someone who isn't working with us, you sure do work with us pretty well."

I didn't know what to say. My tongue felt like it was twisting itself into knots. If I spoke, would he recognize my voice. Sophia hadn't, right? And he hadn't seemed to so far. But... did I _want_ him to recognize my voice, even if I disguised it? No, stupid, why would you **want** him to know it was you?

My inner turmoil was interrupted as Clockblocker waved his hand in front of my face. "Yooohooo. You didn't go into shock, did you?"

I shook it off, coughing as I pointed to the animal and its rider. "Uh, how long does that last?"

He shrugged. "No idea. Anywhere from thirty seconds to ten minutes, usually. I'll freeze them again if they pop out before we get reinforcements." As he said that, Clock placed one hand against the animal's side and the other against Hellhound's leg.

Aegis, who looked as though he'd been through the meat grinder, landed next to us. He was holding some of the contents of his stomach in. "PRT's on the way. Did we stop anyone else?"

Before either of us could answer, Sophia came storming out of the tunnel. "Where is that bitch?!" She demanded, already reloading her crossbow.

"Uh, which one?" Clockblocker asked. "The one you shot, or the one that tagged you?"

"Whichever." Sophia muttered darkly, scanning the horizon for any sign of the two escaped dogs and their passengers.

Gallant, Vista, and Kid Win had all limped out of the tunnel by then as well. None of them looked very happy. They stopped next to the frozen dog, and the tinker hero looked toward Sophia. "How'd she tag you anyway? I thought you were in ghostie form."

The look that Sophia sent him could have withered metal. "I was. She tagged me anyway. Which is bullshit." Then she focused on me, glaring as well. "You could have untagged me, if you're really on our side."

I just stared back at her, restraining the urge to snap at the girl who had been trying her level best to make my life hell for the last several months, who didn't **care** that her bullying... that _our_ bullying had already killed one girl.

"Sorry." I finally muttered. "I was distracted."

She kept glaring through her mask, and I thought she was going to say something else. Fortunately, Vista spoke up instead, addressing me. "So are you joining us or what?"

"Good question." Aegis was also focused on me. Well, on me and on carefully poking his guts back into his torn torso. The sight made me shudder, and I had to remind myself that throwing up under my mask would be a very bad thing.

The rest of them were staring as well. Even Sophia, though her stance didn't say 'please join' nearly as much as it said 'please please please give me an excuse to shoot you'.

I was saved from answering by Aegis holding up his hand. "Go ahead, what's the ETA for our retrieval squad? What? No, we lost Grue but we have Hellhound. We need someone to pick her up." He paused, then sounded confused. "What do you mean, they're all busy? I'm telling you we have one of the Undersiders. We need her contained. What? Who are they-"

He went completely still then, and remained silent for a moment before signing off of his comm.

"What happened?" Gallant had stiffened as well. Apparently he knew that whatever was coming was bad. Not that that was hard to guess.

"It was a distraction." Aegis said stiffly. "Another fucking distraction, just like the bank job that let those guys grab the mayor's niece. They're saying those same guys took someone else this time."

"Another distraction?" Kid Win demanded. "How does that work? They _did_ rescue their teammate."

"Sure." Aegis nodded. "But that was obviously secondary to this. Come on, we've gotta find a way to get Hellhound back and get out there. They're calling in everyone to help."

"Everyone, for a kidnapping?" I saw Clockblocker's head tilt in confusion.

"Everyone for **this** kidnapping." Aegis confirmed.

"Oh no." Vista sounded worried. "Who'd they take this time?"

The leader of the Wards was quiet for a long moment before responding. "Amy Dallon."

"Whoever has Dinah Alcott, also kidnapped Panacea."

**2.04**

Taylor's face, a mixture of fear and resignation dominating her features as it had for so many months, stared up at me. There was no more strength, no more resistance in her expression. She'd been beaten down, hurt, emotionally and even occasionally physically tortured for so long that there was nothing left in her. She just took it. She hid from us at lunch, and whenever we did find her, she just took anything and everything that we dished out, standing there passively with a sad look.

It was the same sad look that I was staring at now, immortalized in a picture on my phone that I had taken the day that Sophia and I had written skank and loser on the back of her gym shirt. She had gone almost half the class period before anyone bothered to point it out to her, because the coach had, as usual, retired to his office after telling us to play a game of basketball. So accustomed was she to the jeers and nasty remarks that came all the time anyway that the new ones in relation to the shirt hadn't tipped her off.

When she finally found out what was on the shirt, what everyone had been snickering about for the previous twenty minutes, Taylor had just turned to look at Sophia and me. She hadn't said anything. She just looked, with that slight dampness to her eyes that gave away how close to tears she had been.

I had taken the picture with my phone then, making some remark about how the baby should just cry and get it over with.

At the time, it had been funny. Hilarious, even. Now, it was all I could do not to take my phone and slam it into the wall next to where I was sitting in the Starbucks down the street from the school. I wanted to smash that picture, and the memory of my stupidity, over and over again, as if it would help.

But even more than I wanted to smash it, I wanted to keep it. I needed it. I needed the picture to remind me of why I was doing this, of why I had to be better than I had been. As Taylor's face, her expression sad, lonely, and lost, looked up at me, I spoke softly. "I know. I'm a fucking dumbass."

A voice from next to the booth where I was sitting spoke up, the haughtiness in the tone like nails on a chalkboard in that moment. "That has to be the truest thing you've ever said."

Great, I'd chosen a booth at the back of the Starbucks, as close to completely out of the way as I could manage, just so that everyone except for the person I was supposed to meet would leave us alone. Apparently it wasn't enough.

I didn't bother looking up for a moment, though I closed the picture on my phone and stared at the wallpaper my home screen. I thought, _Go away, Emma._ while saying, "Huh?"

Looking amused with herself, the model-pretty girl flipped some of her luxurious red hair over one shoulder and stepped closer. "You know, I should have figured it out before. That's why you've turned into such a boring little bitch." I didn't have to look to know the superior smirk that stretched its way across her face. "You had the hots for the loser, didn't you?" When I didn't respond, she laughed gaily. "That's totally it. You were going all dyke for her."

_Wow that was lame. Totally not her best material._ I thought before making myself flush with apparent embarrassment. "Please leave me alone."

Her gleeful smirk turned slightly. "Well you know, if you'd just told us that you wanted to make out with the other freak."

_No, seriously._ I thought while keeping my expression blank. _You really should step it up a notch. I mean seriously? This is lame. Even you have to see that. I give a shit about someone dying, so I must be a lesbian? That's a reach, even for you._

Instead of saying anything of the sort, I simply kept my head down and remained silent, as though I didn't dare speak. It was hard, sometimes, restraining my urge to talk back. But I needed to. Not only because it felt like I deserved a bit of suffering for what I had helped put Taylor through, but also because it gave me a little separation between Tether and Madison. If I acted the same way under and out of the mask, it wouldn't be long before even a blind ferret could draw the connections. My identity had to stay secret, which meant that I had to let things like this go.

Emma's face had narrowed into an annoyed squint when I said nothing. "You really are pathetic, aren't you?"

_Rich words._ I thought. _Coming from someone who keeps her head so far up Sophia's ass that you could give directions to a proctologist._ I paused before speaking, purposefully making my tone as quiet as possible. "Please, Emma, I'm just trying to meet somebody. Can't you go find Sophia and leave me alone?" _Does she know you wandered away from your leash?_

If Emma looked any more proud and arrogant then, I would have been convinced that **she** was the one that was a member of the Wards, for all the credit she seemed to be ready to take. "She's been busy." Her voice lowered, but maintained that smug superiority that I knew so well. "All the you-know-what are really busy right now. Doing important things."

She was right. The last three days had passed in a rush, but there was still no sign of the missing Panacea, or the mayor's niece. Some of the real big shots from the Protectorate had even showed up to help with the search. Not only capes, like Eidelon and Alexandria (who had so far failed to come up with any more leads than the local heroes), but suits of the mundane variety too. Every hour it seemed like there was another press conference with one of the big name capes or one of the PRT 'consultants' they had brought in. The search for Panacea, most likely _the_ most powerful healer in the world, was huge. Every day there were police, PRT officers, and Protectorate-affiliated capes scouring every inch of the city. Hell, they were making an example of Hellhound. Apparently there was even talk of sending her into the Bird Cage if she didn't tell them what they wanted to know about the kidnapping and the Undersiders 'sponsor'.

Whoever had taken Amy Dallon was probably regretting it right about now. No matter how amazing her healing was, it wasn't going to do much to save the person when the Triumverate got a hold of them. Whatever their plan had been, it was clearly backfiring.

Emma's head shook, bringing me back to the moment at hand. "It doesn't have to be like this, you know." When I didn't respond, she continued. "If you ask nicely, I can talk to Sophia. We can handle all of this. It can go back to the way things used to be." She laid her hand against my arm, her voice turning softer. "We can all be friends again. You don't have to suffer."

I let my eyes close. I didn't care. Not really. Every time I was even the slightest bit tempted by the nostalgia of the friendships I'd had, I remembered Taylor. I remembered the truth of what all that had meant. I remembered how psychotic Sophia was, and how pathetic Emma was for staying with her.

But I wanted Emma to think that I was tempted, because I wanted her and Sophia to keep thinking that I was a fun target. I **needed** them to keep thinking that I was a fun target. Because if I let them know that I didn't care, if I fought back or did anything to stop them, they'd move on. They'd pick a better target, someone who **couldn't** handle it.

So I faked it. I pretended to let myself be strung along, giving them just enough of a reaction that they'd be happy and keep using me as their emotional punching bag.

It was no less than I deserved.

When I opened my eyes and glanced toward Emma, I let her see just a little bit of hope.

She laughed in my face, as I'd already known she would. "God, you are so pathetic. Why did I ever pretend you were my friend?" Reaching out with a hand, she smacked my cup over so that the by-then lukewarm coffee went all over the table and spilled into my lap. Then she laughed and walked away.

I was trying to mop up the worst of the spill with the napkins when someone else cleared their throat. I looked up to find Dennis, standing with a raised eyebrow. "What happened?"

"Uhh, accident." I felt my face flush a little, more than when Emma had been _trying_ to embarrass me. "Sorry, I umm, I just..."

"Here." Dennis set down the bag that he was carrying, then reached over to the next table over and grabbed the napkin dispenser. He sat down across from me and started to help me mop up the coffee. We were quiet for a moment while we took care of that.

"So," I said finally. "You look tired. Late party nights over there in Arcadia?" Obviously he was part of the Wards search for Panacea, but it would look odd if I _didn't_ comment on it.

He gave a slight chuckle, shaking his head and rubbing at the dark circles under his eyes. "More like a big test." A strange look crossed his face then, one that confused me a little. He looked... annoyed? Annoyed that he was lying?

"Rather not talk about that." Dennis finally settled on. He reached into the bag he'd brought and pulled out two paperbacks. "I brought the next couple books, just as promised."

I hesitated, then reached out and started to take the books. As my fingers brushed his, my blush deepened, and I felt the sudden and utterly irrational urge to giggle like an idiot.

"Thanks." I finally managed. "You didn't have to bring them."

One side of the red-haired boy's mouth twitched up into a half smile. "So you'd be just as happy with just me and no books?"

My mouth fell open, as my face tried its level best to try to match shades with Dennis's hair. "Well... I..." I coughed twice before rolling my eyes. "Sure." I smiled sweetly. "Because you're going to buy me a new drink."

He blinked at me, then laughed and nodded. "Okay, fine. When you put it that way."

We ordered, and while we were waiting, I looked at the books that he'd brought. "I didn't know you were bringing two."

Dennis nodded. "Yeah, well, I wasn't sure how far through that one you were. Not much of a point to meeting today if you were just going to finish it up in an hour or two."

"I'll get them both back to you as soon as I can." I promised."

That was met with a shrug. "I'm not worried. Give me an excuse to track you down next week."

"Next week?" I made myself sound offended. "Just how slow of a reader do you think I am?"

That half-smile came back. "So you're saying you'd like to meet sooner?"

Choking a little, I pushed at my slightly damp shirt. "Let's see how this meeting goes. Um, give me a minute. I got some of that stuff on me." After excusing myself, I rose and moved past him and across the store to the restroom to do what I could with the coffee-stained shirt.

A few minutes later when I emerged, Dennis was on his phone. I smirked to myself and started to walk closer. I'd make him pay for making me blush so much.

"Yeah, like I said, it's gotta be her, right?"

I stopped at the sound of his voice. What had to be her?

There was a pause before he went on, clearly responding to someone. "It makes perfect sense, doesn't it? She loathes Sophia, she doesn't want to join us, the very idea makes her sick, and she still wants to help people. I mean, come on, it's obvious. Who else has that good of a reason to hate Sophia and refuse to join us?"

Oh my god. Had he figured it out? Did Dennis know?

"Yeah." Dennis went on. "Well I think it was faked."

That derailed me. Faked? What was faked?

"I'm not sure. Someone probably had to help her. Maybe her dad knows someone?"

Well now I was completely lost. What the hell was he talking about?

There was another pause, as the person on the other end of the line apparently wasn't convinced. Dennis replied confidently. "Well, when I turn out to be right, I get to say I told you so. I'm saying it right now. Hebert isn't dead. She's our new little helper."

I stopped breathing, choking a little. He thought that Taylor was alive, and that she was Tether.

**2.05**

My stomach rolled.. This was... wrong, wasn't it? I mean, yes I wanted Taylor to be remembered, but not like this. I didn't want her death to be trivialized or erased. Hell, part of me wanted to punch Dennis for even suggesting that it had been faked. I wanted to know who he was talking to, who he was spreading this to.

Oh god. What if they talked to Taylor's father? The thought made me blanch, and I took a quick step that way, my fists clenched.

What was I doing? I couldn't say anything. I couldn't exactly call him out on what he was talking about, could I?

While I was frozen in indecision, Dennis spoke into the phone again. "I guess that answers that." Slowly, he lifted his hand and waved at someone on the other side of the room.

Wait, no. My eyes moved up, and I saw what he was waving at. A mirror. He was waving at a mirror on the other side of the room, where he could see himself... and me. I stared into the mirror, while Dennis met my eyes.

After a moment, he turned around in his seat and held his phone up for me to see. There was no one on the other end. The phone was on the lock screen. He hadn't been making a call after all.

"You wanna talk?" He asked quietly, his eyes not leaving mine.

My mouth opened and then shut. "What... what was that?"

He rose, gesturing. "A test. I looked into what happened to Taylor, Madison. You were part of her little bully squad, weren't you?"

His voice was a bit harsher than I'd come to expect from him, and I flinched a little. "I... I was... I was stupid."

He nodded in acceptance of that before speaking again. "I needed to know how you'd react to someone thinking she wasn't dead. I needed to see if all this was an act. I needed to know if you cared at all." Finally, Dennis's face softened a little. "I thought you did. But I needed to know. I needed to be sure."

Feeling numb, I slid my way into the booth and stared at him. "But... but why would you..."

Taking a breath, he held up a hand. "Let me start with the first part. You're Tether. I'm guessing you triggered when Taylor died. When you figured out how much you fucked up. And now you're trying to make up for it."

The words were like a blow, and I flinched again. Words failed me, but that didn't seem to matter. Apparently my expression was enough of an answer, and he continued, "That was why it was a two part test. I needed to see your reaction to know if you cared about Taylor's death, and if you knew what I was talking about. You did. Most people would have been confused, but you looked sick. You looked like... someone who couldn't decide if they wanted to give credit for their actions to a dead girl or not." His voice got a bit quieter then. "And you knew exactly what it meant. You know who I am. That part didn't confuse you at all."

For a long moment, we sat across the booth from each other. Then I reached over and punched him in the shoulder, hard. I considered a moment, then hit him again, harder.

Both times, he yelped before grabbing his shoulder. "Gah! What was that for? I didn't tell anyone about your secret, I swear."

"Too bad." I hissed under my breath. "They could've told you how stupid using the memory of a dead girl to try to draw me out was, idiot."

This time, it was his turn to look flustered. His mouth opened and shut, and then he sighed. "I thought it was clever. If you knew the truth, you'd be shocked. If not, you'd be confused. It was an easy test."

"It was horrible." I told him flatly. "You don't use the memory of someone who died to **TEST** someone. You just don't. Especially not... not this girl. Not this one."

He had the decency to look away, and I saw some tension build into him. "How responsible are you for her death?"

My eyes closed and I shook my head, a sudden panic coming over me. "No. I can't talk about this. I can't."

I started to rise, started to flee, but Dennis's hand reached out and caught my arm. "Wait. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for tricking you, for testing you. I just... I've only met you once before now, but I liked you. I liked you, and when I saw that you were part of the group that was bullying Taylor Hebert, I just... lost it a bit. I had to know for sure."

I opened my eyes and looked at him, then closed them again. I couldn't do it. The shame of what I'd been, who I'd been, it was too much. "I'm sorry." I said hollowly. "I didn't mean it."

I wasn't talking to him, and he somehow knew that.

For a moment, we simply sat there with his hand on my arm. He didn't rush me, or interrupt. Finally, after a few minutes, I managed to find my voice again. "I want to get out of here. I can't do this here."

He nodded, and we both stood. Leaving our drinks where they were, we walked out of the store. I looked up and down the street, at a loss for where to go. Dennis was quiet, standing a little behind me until I started to walk toward an alley.

When we were off the street and out of sight once more, I spoke. "I didn't mean for her to die. I didn't even want to do that stupid prank." When he said nothing, I went on. "I mean, yes, I was a bully. I was horrible. I was _evil_, for fuck's sake. When I think back to the things we did to her all the time... I want to throw up. I still do. But I didn't want to do that one. That was Sophia. Sophia pushed her into the locker. Sophia is-"

"Shadow Stalker." He confirmed quietly. "I know. This was about you, not her. I know she doesn't care about it. You're the one I had to know about. That's why she's treating you like this, isn't it?"

"Because I didn't want to forget it." I nodded a little, feeling equal parts exhausted and energized. "Because I wanted to tell someone about what happened."

Leaning against the nearby dumpster, Dennis nodded. "I'd ask why you didn't, but let me guess, she threatened you."

"In a manner of speaking." I replied, rather hesitantly. When he simply raised an eyebrow quizzically, I sighed. "She said that no one would care. She showed me that she was Shadow Stalker, and she said that they'd cover it up to keep her as a Ward. That they'd shut me up if I tried to expose her."

His eyes widened and he blurted, "What the fuck? Why would you believe that?"

"Well she didn't do much to cover her psychotic behavior before!" I shot back. "They let her on the team anyway."

"They _forced_ her onto the team, Madison." He replied, his voice strained. "They made her choose between being a Ward and going to prison, and that was when she _almost_ killed someone. You really think the Protectorate would just let a murderer off? That's insane."

I flinched again, looking down. He took a breath and then sighed. "I'm sorry. It's just... why would you believe her?"

"She can be really convincing." I said dryly. Then, after hesitating, I asked quietly, "Are you sure they wouldn't cover it up?"

"I'm positive." He replied. "Trust me, she's on thin ice as it is. This... this is something they need to know about. Fuck, if you'd just come to us to begin with... that night that Aegis and the others first saw you... You could have said something. She'd be off the streets already."

My head shook. "I didn't think they'd believe me. Or worse, they would believe me and wouldn't care. I kinda decided I'd rather not know which one it was."

"So what was your plan then?" He asked. When I just looked at him blankly, he went on. "What was your plan for dealing with Sophia? What was your plan for stopping her before she killed someone else? Because she sure didn't learn her lesson with the guy that got her sent to the Wards, and she **definitely** didn't learn it from Taylor. I... Jesus, Madison, think about it. You just reinforced that she could get away with things by threatening people."

My mouth fell open at that, the words hitting me like a physical blow. "I... I didn't mean... I didn't think..."

"I'm sorry." Dennis sighed. "I know she scared you. I know all of this is fucked up. But it's _really fucked up._ Totally and completely. You have to tell people. We have to tell people. She can't just kill someone, even if it was an accident, and get away with it. She threatened you, Madison. She's not going to stop. She's not going to get better. And this isn't going to go away."

It was all I could do not to break down again. "I don't know who to talk to. I don't know who to trust."

He was quiet, and then I felt him take my hand. "Trust me. Sophia won't get away with this. I promise. She won't get away with Taylor, and she won't get away with threatening you."

Biting my lip, I hesitated before asking, "So how'd you figure out I was Tether?"

He gave a little laugh. "Because I'm not deaf and stupid? Please. You don't sound _that_ different. And Tether just happens to show up right after you saw me drag Sophia out for a 'project' or whatever the hell I was babbling about? Plus there's that whole animosity with Shadow Stalker. You almost knocked Gallant over with the loathing."

I blushed in spite of myself, sighing softly. "So now what? Things are a _little busy_ with Panacea."

"Yeah..." He agreed. "But we're still going to tell them anyway." He looked at me. "You can go in costume if you don't want them to know who you are. Just tell them what you know about what Sophia did."

"Because Sophia won't immediately turn around and out me the second she figures out how I could possibly know that?" I replied before shaking my head. "No, if I'm doing this, I'm going all in. Taylor deserves justice, and she deserves it from me, not from Tether. I... I have to tell them the truth as myself. Hiding behind a mask to do it, that's... wrong. I owe it to Taylor to tell the truth. You're right. I have to."

Dennis held my gaze for a moment, then nodded seriously. A breath left him, and he finally blurted, "Okay so would you just tell me if you're just telekinetic or _what?_ Because it's been bugging the hell out of us in the Wards and I've got ten bucks riding on it."

I blinked at that, and started to giggle. Dennis smiled and squeezed my hand. Before I could answer, there was a buzz from his phone. Dennis took it out and looked at me before setting it to speaker. "Go ahead."

"They're calling everyone in." The voice of Kid Win said. "They found her."

Eyes widening, Dennis looked at me, then down at the phone. "Panacea? They've got her?"

"They know where she is." The voice replied. "They're calling everyone in to get her out safely. And pound the assholes into the ground so no one tries this shit again."

"Who?" Dennis pressed. "Who took her? Who are we going after?"

There was a pause before Kid Win replied. "Empire Eighty-Eight. The Empire kidnapped Panacea."

**Interlude 2 – Purity**

Kayden Russel still wasn't certain that she was doing the right thing.

Then again, she certainly hadn't been doing the right thing when she became involved with the man she'd had a crush on since she was in middle school and he was a high school baseball star. Or when she married him. Or when she became the second in command of his Empire Eighty-Eight. Purity and Kaiser, the boy becoming a man and taking over where his father had left off, while the little girl with stars in her eyes became his enforcer, then his wife.

Bad choice after bad choice, her life was plagued by them. Every time she thought she'd turned things around, break the cycle, that turned out to be the wrong choice as well. Because no matter where she went, people always saw her as Kaiser's second, as an extension of the man himself.

Leaving Max, divorcing him and distancing herself from the Empire, was one of the only good choices she'd made, and even that wasn't sticking very well. It was the best choice she _could_ make, if she wanted to keep the one true joy of her life away from the thick, evil cloud that was Max.

Aster. Just the thought of her baby, her perfect, beloved little girl, was enough to drive the dark thoughts away from Kayden, bringing a smile to her face.

"Whatcha thinking about, Nazi?" An impudent voice asked. Kayden turned to see the girl from the Undersiders team in the mask with the hand print across it. The girl was clearly trying to see Kayden's face beyond the bright white glow that her active powers gave off from her eyes and hair. That glow was the reason she didn't bother wearing a mask when she was out in costume. In her civilian form, she looked like any thirty year old woman with mousy brown hair. As Purity, her hair and eyes glowed a bright white constantly.

Giving up on seeing her face, Freezetag settled on glaring somewhere around the level of her chest."Trying to remember how many people you've fucked over just because their skin color's different than yours?"

"Tag." Grue, the leader of the Undersiders said in a warning tone. "Don't start. We're busy enough as it is."

"Yeah." The girl muttered, looking away with apparent disgust. "Busy working with the fucking Klu Klux Kunt."

Before either Kayden or Grue, or any of the other Undersiders for that matter, could respond to that, their benefactor walked into the room, and all side conversations stopped.

"Good afternoon." The man in the skintight black bodysuit with the design of a white snake encircling it, the tip of the snake's tail near his ankle while the head perched over the forehead of his full mask, greeted them simply. "I trust you have questions."

"Knowing what she's doing here would be a good start." Grue said, his voice conveying his annoyance without being_overtly_ rude. "I thought we were framing the Empire Eighty-Eight for this kidnapping. That **is** what you told my team when you convinced them to carry out their part."

Coil regarded the Undersider's leader briefly before pointing out mildly. "A part which, as I recall, resulted in your rescue from PRT custody."

"And resulted in the capture of another of our teammates." Grue returned. Behind him, Regent and Tattletale were standing out of the way, looking bored and intensely interested, respectively. Freezetag shifted from foot to foot, clearly wanting to be done with all this already, while Browbeat sat in a corner, doing nothing and looking at no one. Kayden wasn't sure what was going on with that one. He'd been an up and coming solo hero, but he'd abruptly joined the Undersiders with no explanation, and now he wasn't doing anything at all. Just staring blankly at the floor. If she didn't know better, she would have guessed that he was a robot whose off switch had been flipped.

"Hellhound's capture was unfortunate." Coil admitted. "If possible, we will retrieve her. If not, you will all receive payment equal to what she would have received on average for the next year's worth of jobs, divided among you."

"Bitch." Grue corrected. "She prefers Bitch."

"Yo. Slytherin." Freezetag waved a hand as though to get Coil's attention. "That. That right there." She was pointing at Kayden. "Focus, dude. What is she doing here? We don't work with—" Her last words were cut off by Grue surrounding her head with a dark cloud. The girl's fist shook and then she folded her arms and assumed a position of intense sulking.

"Thank you." Coil nodded at Grue, then looked toward Kayden once more. "Ms. Purity here is a key part of the aforementioned frame job, actually. Isn't that right?"

She'd needed a way out, a way to make a name for herself, to be _better_ than what she'd been with the specter of Kaiser looming over everything she did. For herself and for Aster. For a time she had been trying to take on the ABB solo, thinking that by driving them out of the city, people might finally see her for herself.

It hadn't been enough. She'd been so desperate to win, to do what had to be done and finally beat the gang that had become her nemesis that she'd very nearly decided to go back to Max and ask for his help.

Coil had found her instead. He had found her, and extended an offer of a limited partnership. In exchange for her help, her lies, he would ensure that Max would never be a problem for her or for Aster, and that her baby would never want for anything in her life.

And, just maybe, her actions would make the PRT see her in a different light as well.

Grue's head tilted slightly, and she could almost see the confusion written across his helmet. "Explain."

Instead, Coil reached into the pocket of his costume and withdrew a slim, prepaid cell phone. He offered it to her. "If you would?"

Kayden took the phone and then took a breath before dialing a number that she had memorized. Under the eyes of the other costumed parahumans, she held the phone up to her ear.

A computerized voice answered. "You have reached the PRT – Brockton Bay offices. If you know your party's extension, please press pound, followed by the extension. For public relations questions or concerns, press one. If you are or know a parahuman who would like to speak to an adviser, please press two..."

She listened until the voice gave her the option to press 9, 9, pound, for a direct emergency. A moment later a bored receptionist asked for her name. Kayden hesitated only slightly before answering. "Purity."

There was a pause, and then the woman asked her to repeat herself, slightly more awake now.

"My name is Purity. Yes, that Purity. I know where the girl is. The healer girl. She's with Kaiser. Kaiser is the one who took her." Another slight pause as the woman frantically asked her to wait while she transferred her, and then Kayden answered their next question. "Yes, I can tell you where to go. I can tell you exactly where he's keeping her."

That conversation continued through several more hoops before Kayden disconnected the phone. She looked up toward Coil and the Undersiders. "There. I did my part."

"So you have." The mastermind of this situation gave a slight nod. "I thank you for that."

"So lemme get this straight." This time it was Regent who interrupted. "She just turned into Benedict Arnold and sold out her old team by telling the PRT that her old boss has the girl that fucking **everybody** is looking for. Great, so what happens when they turn over every rock with the Empire's name on it and don't find the girl?"

Coil shook his head. "They will find the girl, actually. Panacea will be located right where Purity told them to check."

"And when she tells them that the Empire didn't kidnap her?" Freezetag, who had escaped the muffling cloud by then, prompted.

"As far as she knows, they did." Coil replied simply. He made a simple, dismissive gesture. "The girl has been held for the past three days in a garage that every record will indicate belongs to Kaiser's civilian identity. She has seen and spoken to people she believes work for the Empire, and a man that Miss Dallon believes to be Kaiser killed his other captive, the young Dinah Alcott, to make an example of her and to ensure Panacea's future contributions versus more deaths if she refused."

Kayden could see Grue go completely still. His voice turned hard. "You had that little girl killed?"

Coil's head shook. "Surely not. The girl is safe and sound. But Miss Dallon is convinced that she is not, and that is the key."

"So now what?" Regent wanted to know.

Coil started to respond, before noticing Tattletale. "Would you like to answer that?"

Kayden recognized the smile that spread across the purple-costumed girl then. It was the smile of one who _loved_ to show off how smart she was, who couldn't wait to prove that she was one step ahead of everyone else in the room. "Well, if you insist."

Tattletale tapped her fingers against her head before gesturing. "You've got a couple of the Empire's people heading out there already, don't you? Somehow you've rigged it so that they're going to show up at the garage just as the heroes do."

His expression hidden, Coil simply nodded.

The girl went on then. "So whoever you managed to get out there gets smashed by the Triumverate and whoever else they bring along with them, which just reinforces the whole idea that the Empire was behind it. They rescue Panacea, who tells them that Kaiser was responsible, and that he killed the mayor's niece. Then the Empire gets taken apart by every cape in the city that Panacea's kidnapping pissed off. They don't stand a chance, and no one else is going to take their side and risk being labeled alongside them. Empire Eighty-Eight's done."

She glanced sidelong toward Kayden. "All except for the woman who turned in the boss, who most people know was already separating herself from Kaiser and the Empire, who was known for having a change of heart. She gets to be the big hero who told the truth and let them find Panacea. Which, incidentally, will finally make people stop lumping her in as Kaiser's bitch."

Kayden stiffened, then relaxed. What did it matter now? "Are we done here? I need to be there if this is going to work. They need to see me actively helping."

Coil gave another slight nod. "Go. And Purity, remember, do not speak with Armsmaster without activating the tinker tech I provided you. You won't be able to lie without it."

Making a noise of acknowledgment, Kayden turned to leave the room. On her way out, she heard Grue speak again. "Now let's talk about how you're planning on getting the heat off us for our part in the kidnapping. And how we're going to save Bitch."

Ignoring that, Kayden left the room, making her way through the underground base that was still under heavy construction. She wound her way through until she reached the room next to the exit. Poking her head in there, she found a pudgy fifteen year old boy sitting on a couch with her beautiful baby girl sleeping in his arms.

"Has she made any fuss, Theo?" She asked the boy. He was Max's son from another woman, a boy that she'd never been able to make herself love the way that she loved her own baby. But she did care about what happened to him, and she hadn't wanted him to be caught up in the crossfire when this went down. So she had made Theo part of the deal with Coil. He had to take care of all three of them if he wanted Purity to do her part.

The boy shook his head, his eyes on the tv across the room before he focused on her. "She was just hungry." He said simply, indicating the empty bottle on the couch.

"I'll be back soon." Kayden promised. "If she wakes up again, there's another bottle in the bag next to the chair."

Theo nodded but said nothing. She knew that he had to have some idea of what she was doing, that Coil wasn't on friendly terms with his father and what her being there meant. But he hadn't said anything. He never said anything that might mean expressing an opinion. His father had made sure of that.

She couldn't even tell if the idea of her betraying Max made him happy or sad.

Suppressing the urge to push the boy to offer _something_ resembling an individual thought or emotion, Kayden quietly backed out of the room. Then she took the next door and left the underground base behind.

A moment later, Purity launched herself into the sky, glowing brightly before streaking off toward the address she'd given the PRT. By this time next week, she wouldn't be Purity, the enforcer of Kaiser's racist Empire Eighty-Eight. She'd be Purity, hero of Brockton Bay, responsible for the rescue of Panacea.

Then Aster would grow up with a mother she could be proud of.

**Interlude 2B – Legend**

High above the city of Brockton Bay, the man known to the world as Legend, the leader and public face of the entire Protectorate, floated alongside the clouds. His gaze took in the buildings laid out below him, a side effect of his extensive powers meaning that he could see perfectly no matter the distance, until an obstacle or the atmosphere intervened.

His gaze flicked across people, searching for any sign of the girl that he and so many others had been scouring this city is for the past three days. Three days where he had been away from his husband and their son even more than was the norm for their unconventional family. Three days where he missed them both so much that the terrible feeling that Amy's family must have been going through weighed on him more with each passing moment, convincing him to search even longer.

And yet it wasn't on the streets or on the people within them that he was truly focused on in this moment. Instead, his attention lay on the private, untraceable phone that was currently held to one ear.

"Tell me that we have nothing to do with this."

The voice on the other end of the phone, the woman he had known for more than a decade and yet did not _truly_ know at all, was silent for a moment before responding. "We have no interest in removing useful parahumans from the world, Legend. Particularly ones such as Panacea. All of our goals, **all** of them, are much better suited to Amy Dallon staying where she was."

It did not escape Legend's attention that the woman had not _technically_ answered the question.

"We do have a request for the resolution of this situation." The woman continued before he could decide if it was worth pressing the issue.

"You must be joking." He replied. "A teenage girl is missing, if it escaped your notice. This isn't the time to be playing games."

The woman's voice turned slightly colder. "As I already said, returning Amy Dallon to her home is in everyone's best interests. This request does not concern her safety. Rather, it concerns the fate of those who will fall in response to this abduction."

It took him a moment to work through that. "Are you saying you know who has her?"

"That information is making its way through official channels as we speak. You will be receiving the call within the next two minutes. But first, we must come to an agreement." The woman paused to let him speak, but he said nothing. After a moment, she continued. "As I said, removing useful parahumans is against everything we stand for."

"You want to offer them a deal." Legend spoke in disbelief. "These are the people who abducted Panacea, probably one of our top five assets against things like the Endbringers, and you want to make them an offer to avoid punishment."

"Believe me when I tell you that the ones we are speaking of have nothing of note to do with that abduction. That is not to say that they are not terrible people. But they **can** be removed from the general population and still remain... useful."

"What do you want?" Legend replied, a little stiffly.

"We want you to make them an offer."

He frowned slightly at that. "What kind of offer?"

She told him, and by the time she was done, the call had come in.

Orienting himself toward the objective, the man called Legend went from a floating start to a streak across the sky with an abruptness that left doubt whether he had ever truly been there, while a rolling boom announced his obliteration of the sound barrier.

As he approached the supposedly abandoned automotive repair garage that their informant had described, Legend spotted a group of costumed teenagers using another building as cover as they gathered. He slowed his flight and descended, landing at the edge of the assembled group.

Their eyes turned to him, and he saw the awe that still, to this day, made him want to turn to see what famous, important, _special_ person must have been standing behind him.

"Sir." The teenager in the red costume with the shield emblem came to attention. "We're ready whenever you need us."

"Aegis." He had become acquainted with the group over the last several days. He let his attention sweep over the group. Kid Win, Shadow Stalker, Clockblocker, Gallant, and Vista. And... another. He blinked, looking the girl up and down. She wore a clearly homemade costume that consisted of urban camo pants, a white turtleneck, black vest with a hood, and white balaclava mask. "You I don't know."

The resulting high pitched whistling-whine noise almost made Legend instinctively check for incoming projectiles. It took him a second to realize that the noise was coming from the girl. Before his eyes, she started to vibrate, literally bouncing up and down as that whining noise that he slowly realized was excitement grew louder with each passing second.

Smiling a little, Legend lifted his hand and started to give his standard greeting for a new cape. He didn't get the chance. The girl reacted to his raised hand by throwing herself forward. Her arms flew out and wrapped around him, and Legend found himself being hugged tighter than he could remember anyone without super strength outside of his own family hugging him.

And she was still bouncing, that high pitched squee continuing for long enough that he started to wonder if she _needed_ to breathe.

In spite of himself, Legend returned the embrace. He couldn't help it, and a chuckle escaped him.

"Tether!" Aegis hissed in shock, while Clockblocker and Kid Win looked as though they were starting to lose their struggle not to laugh out loud. Gallant was shaking his head, while Vista stared at the ground, shoulders shaking through her silent giggles. Shadow Stalker had her arms folded, the disbelief and anger clearly apparent.

Finally, the girl's mask tilted up toward him. Her voice was cheerful. "You give good hugs."

"Oh my god, Tether." Aegis blurted. "He's the leader of the Triumverate and one of the most powerful people in the world._**Stop hugging him!"**_

She did release him, only to turn toward the other teenager, head cocked to the side quizzically. "Explain to me which part of that makes him less deserving of hugs."

"He's... he's... he's Legend! He's been saving the world since before we were born!" Aegis sputtered in disbelief.

The girl leaned back a bit toward the man, her voice lowering into a stage whisper. "You hear that? Decades of saving the world and he doesn't think you've earned hugs. Boy, the things you've gotta do to impress some people." She made a whistling noise of disappointment.

The Wards leader's protests dissolved into incoherent noises, and most of the rest of the team finally failed in their attempts to avoid snickering.

Chuckling a little before coughing to cover it, Legend straightened, regarding the girl with interest. "New member?" Was she a product of Cauldron? Most of the... standard capes weren't nearly so... cheerful, particularly when it was obviously so soon since whatever traumatic event had caused their trigger. But if she was a Cauldron Cape...

Aegis squinted at the girl briefly. "We're not sure. She's... strange."

"She's new." Clockblocker spoke up. "But we're not sure if she's a member yet. She's helpful though."

"Tether, was it?" He was going to have to ask the Doctor, in general terms, if his theory was right.

Her head bobbed. "That's my name. Well it's not my name. It's not like my school ID has my picture on it next to the name 'Tether', and my mom doesn't say 'hey tether, time for dinner!' and-"

In the background, Aegis had turned Gallant so that he could bang his forehead against the other boy's metal armored back.

Shaking his head, Legend held up a hand to forestall the girl. "I get the picture. I know what everyone else here does. What about you?"

"Umm..." Now the girl's posture made her look nervous and uncertain. She was definitely new. He wondered how she was so comfortable cracking jokes just before something like this. Growing up in a cape family maybe? "I make lines."

He blinked at that. "Come again?"

Looking toward a nearby dumpster, the girl pointed. "Lines. One end there..." Then she pointed to the fence across the lot. "The other end there. And... pull." The dumpster started to slide across the lot toward the fence. "There's more to it, but that's it basically. Lines. I can make them push or pull." As another demonstration, she lifted her hand toward the upper wall of the building. "Line from my glove to the wall." She was pulled off the ground.

"Damn it!" Clockblocker cursed, while Kid Win raised both of his hands in triumph. At Legend's curious look, the time-stopper shrugged. "We had a bet about what her powers were, exactly."

"Umm, Mr. Legend, sir?" Tether asked from her hanging position. "There's something else. My powers also make lines to show me where people are that are going to get hurt, and it's making an awful lot of them right now."

He frowned at that. "Where?"

The girl pointed in demonstration. "All the way over there at the building, and ummm... Up there." She pointed up, toward an approaching group of fliers.

Everyone looked that way, and Aegis sighed. "New Wave. No way they'll wait for backup."

Legend tapped his comm. "How long until everyone else gets here?" When the response came, he cursed. "They're still at least six minutes out." He paused slightly, then looked to the Wards. "I'm going to try to stall them and keep this under control. Failing that, if things go south, I'll go for grabbing everyone's attention. If that happens, all of you focus on getting around to the back side of that garage, find a way in, and get that girl out."

He waited until they nodded in acknowledgment, then took off into the sky once more, flying for the group that was streaking toward the garage. Specifically, the blonde girl in the white dress and cape that was leading the charge.

Grimacing, Legend shot his way out in front of them, turning in the air to hold up a hand. "Wait."

Glory Girl, rage evident on her face even as she reluctantly halted, looked for a moment as though she would go around him anyway, reputation be damned. "My sister's down there."

To the angry girl's either side, two more teenage figures had halted. Laserdream, in her white bodysuit with the emblem of a red and magenta arrow and lines radiating back and around from her chest out to her arms and legs, floated to Glory Girl's left, and Shielder, with his own matching white body suit save for the emblem of a blue shield that matched his blue hair, was to her right. A bit behind the three, Lady Photon and Brandish, mother of Shielder and Laserdream, and mother of Glory Girl (and adoptive mother of Panacea), respectively, floated.

Impetuously, the girl in the lead, her powerful aura of intimidation going full blast, glared at him. "Move."

"Victoria!" Brandish admonished her daughter. "Think about who you're talking to."

"I know who I'm not talking to." Glory Girl shot back at her mother. "My sister. So why are we still waiting around?"

"We need to scout the building." Legend cautioned. "We have a group ready to ensure the safety of Panacea. I understand your urgency. But if we wait for just a few minutes so that all of our reinforcements can arrive, there's a much better chance of-"

Glory Girl, who had been rolling her eyes, spotted a van pulling into the lot below them. As two figures emerged, she went from mostly ignoring what Legend was saying, to _completely_ ignoring him. She inverted in the air and dove with a suddenness that took even him by surprise, while her mother shouted her name. On either side of the empty spot where Victoria Dallon had been, her cousins exchanged looks and sighed before chasing after her.

Spinning in the air, Legend saw the four figures emerge from the van. One was a large, rather hairy man with greasy blond hair that he recognized as the so-called 'Hookwolf'. The girl who stepped out next to him couldn't have been any older than the girl they had kidnapped. Clearly that was the telekinetic Rune, while the remaining two were the husband and wife duo of Othala, who granted super powers from a limited pool to those she touched, and Victor, the skill thief.

"You!" Glory Girl shouted in a rage that made Legend wince. The bellow served as a warning, giving Othala time to notice her arrival and touch her husband barely a second before Victoria collided with him. From the man's lack of reaction, she'd had time to grant him temporary invincibility.

The rest of New Wave descended upon the quartet of Nazis, the scene degenerating into a brawl before Legend could finish sighing in annoyance at being ignored.

Hookwolf had changed shape, becoming a wildly shifting mass of blades and hooks that vaguely resembled a giant wolf. Shielder had created a forcefield and was working to contain him. Meanwhile, Rune had touched the van the group had arrived in, and was making it fly through the air at high speed, forcing Brandish and Lady Photon to continually dodge.

Victor had used his temporary invincibility to weather Glory Girl's charge, then simply turned the girl's own speed against her, throwing her into the nearby wall. By the time she had recovered, his wife had reached his side, her touch switching his super power so that he could send a wave of fire through the air and toward the girl who had ambushed them.

Laserdream reached the pair then to back up her cousin, her attack sending the husband and wife diving for cover.

Finally seeing enough of this, Legend flew from his spot in the air to land in a crouch in the middle of the lot with his arms outstretched to either side. At a single thought, a half dozen lasers emerged from each of his hands.

Four of the lasers curved around and up, blasting the van into several pieces just before Rune could hit Brandish with it, while the fifth, less powerful laser gave the telekinetic a surgically precise burn across her arm, making her yelp and lose control of the pieces so that they fell to the ground. The sixth laser shot through the brick half-wall that Othala and Victor had been taking cover behind, forcing the pair to recoil from the brick dust that exploded into their eyes, while the seventh and eighth lasers shot directly between where their figures were after they drew back from the dust, forcing Othala to retreat a few steps from her husband.

Finally, the remaining four lasers tore into Hookwolf, shearing nearly half of the metal from his figure in a single attack.

By the time Legend finished straightening from his initial landing, the fighting had stopped, and everyone was watching him.

"Good." He said simply. "Now that I have your attention, maybe we can talk like civilized adults."

Stalking forward, Glory Girl demanded, "Where. Is. Amy?" Her aura was going even stronger than before.

Hookwolf, who had resumed his human shape, glowered. "Girl, even if I-"

Before he could continue speaking, the doors of the garage flew open and the standing heroes were met by a hail of gunfire. Legend felt several impacts against his chest, his power protecting him by shifting his state to a semi-energy state for a brief instant to absorb the energy of the bullets and incinerate their physical form so that each only conveyed a slight fraction of the damage they should.

A flood of men wearing the Empire Eighty-Eight's colors emerged from the garage. Three ran to Othala and put themselves between her and the heroes, ushering her back toward Victor. Two more rushed to Rune, providing her with a large bag that the pair were carrying between them. When Rune reached into the bag, a half dozen basketball sized metal balls rose from the bag and began to circle the teenager rapidly as she exercised her power.

More of the men provided cover fire for Hookwolf with a mixture of gun and laser fire, giving the man an opportunity to recover while the heroes were forced to back up, using various forcefields as protection.

Taking aim, Legend sent another half dozen lasers curving around the various shields that had sprung up, blasting the weapons out of several of the men's hands.

In the midst of all this gunfire, a voice bellowed, "_**WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?"**_

Everyone involved turned to find the leader of the Empire Eighty-Eight, the man known as Kaiser, standing at the edge of the lot, flanked by his twin blonde bodyguard valkyries, both of whom had increased their size to roughly fifteen feet. Only half of their maximum, but still intimidating to most people.

Legend stepped forward, keeping his eyes roving across the men in case someone had an itchy trigger finger. "We're here for the girl, Kaiser."

"What-" It was as far as the man got, before another figure flew down from the sky, the bright glow surrounding her figure making it difficult to stare directly at her.

"It's too late, Max." She said while positioning herself between Legend and Kaiser. "I've told them everything. I told them about how the Empire took the girl to fix your condition."

For a moment, Kaiser just stared at the woman. "You... you've turned... how..." The confusion in his voice turned to a noise of rage. He raised his hand, and Legend moved to intervene.

He never had the chance. The man stopped in mid-motion, his body going rigidly still. His head tilted, his words turned into a horrified cry of agony that was as terrible as it was brief, and blood poured from the man's eyes and mouth. Then he collapsed to the ground, utterly still.

No one moved. No one spoke. None of it seemed real. Slowly, one of the blonde valkyries shrunk down and knelt at Kaiser's side, laying a hand against him. A moment later, her confused, bewildered voice called out, "He's... he's dead!"

Everyone, from both sides, looked shocked. Before anyone else could recover, a voice called out, "Amy!" Glory Girl flew across the lot, straight toward the group that was emerging from the garage. It was the Wards this time, escorting the Healer.

Embracing her sister tightly, Glory Girl started to examine her, looking for damage. But Panacea waved her off and approached. She was limping, and Legend remembered belatedly that, for all her power, the girl was incapable of healing her own body.

"This is why he took me." She said, addressing him. "There was something wrong with his brain. He said that a bio-tinker did something to him as revenge for something. He wanted me to fix him, so his power would stop hurting his brain. He was afraid that if he got too angry, it would kill him." She lowered her voice, scowling. "I told him I don't do brains. So he killed... he killed..." Her eyes closed and she gave a shudder. "He killed that little girl. He killed Dinah, because I wouldn't fix his brain."

By that time, the rest of the Empire Eighty-Eight troops had recovered somewhat from the dual impact of their leader's death and his second-in-command's apparent defection. The giant women had unslung their weapons, a spear and a sword and shield respectively, while gaining another ten feet of height. Hookwolf looked like he was ready for blood, Rune had taken the time to add several more chunks of debris to her arsenal, and Victor and Othala were together. The unpowered troops with their guns had regained their footing, spacing themselves out to provide cover for the actual capes.

"Kaiser is dead!" Purity called out, facing the group as she floated partway off the ground. "The Empire is over!"

This was met with a loud curse from Hookwolf. "Slut!" he shouted. "Which one of the Protectorate fucks banged you so hard you switched sides, huh? Just tell me it wasn't a nigger. Tell me you ain't flipped around that bad."

Purity's hands clenched, and she shook her head. "It's over, Wolf. It's time to stop."

"What it's time for..." Hookwolf snarled. "is me to jam a few footlong spikes up your cunt." He leapt into his alternate form, tearing toward the floating woman with a shriek of grinding, twisting metal.

Before Legend could intervene, Purity extended her hand. A blinding blast of light leapt from her fingers, utterly engulfed the charging Hookwolf, and sent him flying backwards to hit the wall of the garage, before carrying on through through said wall, leaving the broken, shattered form lying collapsed in the rubble that remained.

"I never did like that kind of language." Purity said quietly.

Legend decided that the silence that followed was as good of a time as any, and raised his hand. "The rest of you listen to me right now. The country wants to make an example out of you. Kidnapping Panacea was a bad, bad idea. They wouldn't mind if we finished this fight the hard way, just so no one else gets the idea of trying something like that again. This isn't something you can run from. It's not a fight you can win."

He took a breath, letting that set before continuing. "But, I've been authorized to offer you a deal. Everyone, any of you who surrender unconditionally in the next five seconds after I finish talking will do their time in a regular maximum security prison. Everyone who doesn't goes to the Bird Cage. Period. No exceptions. Believe me when I say, this is a one time deal."

"So, who's up for it?"

By the time that the members of the local Protectorate, as well as his partners in the Triumverate, reached the scene, all of the Empire's people who had been present had surrendered. The unpowered people had been first, unsurprisingly, but the others had followed suit without Hookwolf to goad them on, helped by the sight of their deceased leader lying in the middle of the parking lot.

Now, hours later, Legend stood in a room in the local Protectorate base, alongside Eidolon and Alexandria, the other two members of the most powerful trio of heroes in the world. "I don't understand it. He just... died.. No explanation."

"Tinkers." Eidolon said with a shrug. "Especially bio-tinkers. You've seen what Bonesaw can do."

Alexandria shook her head. "I'm just glad the girl's back. Now we can go home." When the other two looked at her, she blanched. "That sounded worse than I meant it."

"We're all tired." Legend agreed, sighing a little.

Eidolon asked, "What's going to happen to the Empire troops that we haven't found?" There were a handful of powered capes that hadn't been present at the battle and who had yet to surrender themselves.

"The locals can track them down and deal with them." Legend replied. "We did our part. Panacea is safe with her family." He paused then before adding, "and Cauldron has new recruits." The last part he wasn't happy about.

"It's for the best." Alexandria assured him. "Really. They'd rot in the Bird Cage otherwise."

"Maybe they should." Legend looked at her seriously. "These are not good people. They're murderers, monsters. We're supposed to be the good guys. We're supposed to put those kind of people in prison."

"Cauldron isn't a vacation." She replied, her own expression neutral. "They can actually do some good there. The research alone from the influx of subjects..."

Legend shook his head, glancing toward Eidolon for an opinion. All he received was a shrug.

Sighing again, he was spared from responding by a knock on the door. When permission was given, the door opened and a man that Legend recognized as one of the consultants that had been brought in to help with the search for Panacea. "Yes?"

"Sorry to interrupt." The man apologized, stepping into the room. "Just need you to sign a few things before you head out. Bureaucracy stuff about how Purity was in her right to use lethal force to defend herself, as well as a few items related to Kaiser's company and assets."

Taking the forms that the man offered him, Legend examined the papers, then began to sign them. He paused. "This says the PRT is seizing his assets."

The man nodded. "That's correct, sir. It was decided in the wake of Panacea's kidnapping to create a new arm of the PRT."

Alexandria's head turned at that. "A new branch?"

"Yes, ma'am." The man hesitated before going on. "Because most of the PRT is based around defense, and power. We need a new group focused on investigation, and protection."

"Bodyguards for capes?" Eidolon sounded doubtful.

"Secret Service for capes." The man confirmed. "Only if they request it. Or for their families. Also people with investigative skills and history, who can focus on the... less world ending threats." He paused before adding pointedly, "Like kidnapping."

Legend signed the last form. "And what does that have to do with the Empire's assets?"

"That's what we're using to fund the formation of this group." The man replied. "Originally it was going to have to wait for the next yearly budget allotment, if we could fit it in at all. I convinced the national director that this was too important to wait on, so we're going to use Kaiser's seized assets and infrastructure as a starting point to build off of so that we can get off the ground. That's why we have to take care of this so soon. It's going to take weeks to sort through everything, and we can't touch it until the paperwork goes through. I ahh, just thought it'd be easier to get you to sign the forms now than try to track you down after you leave."

"We?" Alexandria lifted her head. "Sounds like you have a lot riding on this."

The man flushed a little, ducking his head. "I suppose so, ma'am. It was sort of my idea, so the Director, he put me in charge of it."

Legend chuckled. "No wonder you want these forms signed. That means this is you?" He indicated the name stamped on several of the pages.

"Yes, sir." The man confirmed. "Thomas Calvert, that's me."


	3. Arc 3: Institution

Two nights later, the flash from my camera lit up the surrounding darkness of the rooftop, illuminating its single subject. In the next instant, a crossbow bolt was shooting toward where the person holding the camera would have been standing if I hadn't set it to a delayed automatic shot and moved out of the way.

"No no no." I injected disappointment into my voice from my spot, sitting on top of the waist-high wall on the opposite corner of the roof from where Sophia stood in full Shadow Stalker regalia. "For the action shot, you're supposed to tell me_before_ you fire the bow. This was just the full profile shot."

Lifting the second crossbow, Sophia's voice was hard and dangerous. "You're pretty stupid aren't you? What the hell are you doing here?"

I let my head tilt quizzically. "Well see, someone told me you were patrolling tonight. Only I wasn't sure I'd recognize you out in the dark when you weren't beaten unconscious, so I wanted to make sure I had a picture to study." I held each of my gloved hands up, using two fingers from each to form a square frame around her. "Maybe you could lay down and whimper a little so I could have a before-and-after shot?"

Her snarl was audible this time. "Look you little bitch, I don't care who thinks you're funny. I think you're a stupid, pathetic, needy little girl that needs to stay the hell out of my way. I'm trying to work, so I'm going to tell you one more time to leave me the fuck alone. We've got nothing to talk about."

"Actually," I slid off my perch to drop down to the roof. "We do have one thing we should probably discuss."

Sophia's stance suggested that she was seriously considering just shooting me. "Pretty sure we don't."

I reached up, using the back of my hand to brush my hood off, then took a hold of my mask and pulled it up and off so that Sophia could see my face. "I beg to differ."

For a moment, she just stared at me, her expression hidden behind her own mask with that image of the woman's stern face on it. Then she doubled over a little and started to laugh. She laughed loudly, putting out a hand to the nearby wall to catch herself after dropping one of her crossbows back in its slot on her belt.

"Oh god. Oh my god, that is fantastic. That's great." Sophia managed after a minute. "Let me guess, let me guess, now you think I'm going to be all impressed. Now I'm supposed to be all, 'oh Mads, I was so wrong. I was wrong about you.', right? You actually think this changes anything? It doesn't change anything. You were a loser when I let you hang out with us, you were a loser when you were off moping around by yourself, and you're an even bigger loser now. That only difference now is that instead of having two people that I think are worthless little shits that don't deserve oxygen, there's just the one. You. It was always you."

I weathered that, letting her talk. When she was done, I shrugged. "Actually, I was kind of thinking that I'd just kick your ass and then turn you in."

Sophia's laughter stopped, and she straightened, gazing at me for a moment. "You wanna run that by me again?" She asked in a deadly, low tone.

I kept my own voice bright, as though discussing the weather. "I said I was going to kick your ass, then turn you in. But you know, if you'd prefer to avoid the ass kicking, you could always just fess up on your own. You know what they say, confession is good for the soul. As in, the sole of my boot when I don't break it off on your backside, during said ass kicking."

"Ooooh Maddy Maddy Maddy." Sophia continued to glare at me, shaking her head slowly. "You did not want to give me this excuse. This... this you're going to regret."

"Trust me, Sophia, of all the things I regret... this won't even crack the top ten." I promised.

"Oh boo fucking hoo!" She shouted back at me. "What the hell do you want from me, Madison? It was an accident. You get that? You understand me? She wasn't supposed to die, but to **hell** if I'm going to let one weak, useless little girl ruin**my life**!"

"_**What about HER life?!"**_ I shot back, just as loudly. "What about Taylor's life?! She's gone, she's dead and it's our fault."

"So what?!" Sophia demanded, sounding almost hysterical. "That's not my fault!"

"Oh, I suppose she shoved herself in the locker full of tampons." I retorted.

She screamed back at me, "**It was a joke!"** Stalking my way, Sophia went on. "A joke. You used to think my jokes were funny. You thought all the other ones were funny."

"Yeah." I agreed quietly. "And that's something I have to live with. Not ignore and pretend it never happened."

"Oh would you just grow up?" Sophia stopped barely a few feet from me, glowering. "It was an accident. She was weak. She was a loser when she was alive and she died like a loser. A pathetic, worthless little crybaby freak. You should be thanking me."

"Thanking you?" I echoed with some disbelief.

"Of course!" Sophia raised both hands in exasperation. "Look at you now! Just look at yourself! You have powers now, Madison. You have powers! That's because of me. Everything you are is because of me! I made you. I brought you into our little group, I made you popular, and I made you unpopular. And now, I made you a cape! I made you into a superhero!"

I lowered my head, took a long breath, and then raised it to look at her. "That's the difference between you and me, Sophia. I give you no credit... or blame for **my** choices. You didn't make me into a bitch. You didn't make me laugh at Taylor. You didn't make me hurt her. You didn't even make me _like_ hurting her. That was me. Those were my choices, my decisions, my mistakes. It was my stupidity. Everything I did... all of it, was because I chose to do it." I met her gaze through her mask. "Just like I'm going to choose to tell everyone the truth about Taylor."

Her grip on the one crossbow that had remained in her hand tightened. "You know I can't let you do that, Madison."

"Then do it yourself." I told her quietly. "Tell them the truth, tell them it was an accident, that you panicked, that you were scared. Tell them the truth and maybe they'll go easy on you."

Her scream, barely a few feet from my face, was almost incoherent. "**I'M A SUPER HERO!"** Her crossbow was pointed straight at me. "I'm a fucking super hero, you stupid, whiny little brat! Do you even understand that? Do you have any idea, any idea at all how many people I've saved?! I've risked my life over and over and over again, to save the pathetic_losers_ of this world, the people who don't deserve to live! I save them again and again and again. Don't you think that balances out one little mistake? Don't you think one **ACCIDENT** is less important than the dozens of lives I save every single time I put one of these criminal fucks behind bars?!"

"No." I said simply.

"No?" Sophia echoed in disbelief. "No, what?"

I took a breath before letting it out. "No, it's not less important. The way you treat the people that you think are less than you is one of the most important things about you." I let my gaze meet hers once more before adding, "And no, you're not a super hero."

She let out a noise of inarticulate rage before raising her crossbow. "Fuck you, Madison." She fired a snapshot, and the bolt streaked toward me.

Or it did for roughly half the distance, before the line that I had already attached between the bolt and Sophia's arm while she was shouting at me moments earlier snapped taut. Before Sophia had any idea of what had just happened, in the span of a blink, her bolt went from shooting toward me, to snapping back and around to embed itself halfway through her arm.

"Just think," I couldn't resist pointing out. "If you'd just stuck with the nonlethal ammo they wanted you to, you could pass out now instead of experiencing every bit of the ass kicking that you deserve."

She snarled, tore the bolt away, and went into her shadow state before lunging for me. I planted two lines against my feet and used them to propel myself into a nine foot high jump over her head, then oriented onto another line to pull myself behind her while she was swinging at the area that I'd been in.

I landed, and Sophia reacted with blinding quickness, spinning into a kick that brought her leg all the way around to the side of my head and sent me sprawling to the rooftop.

Stunned for a second, I barely managed to roll aside as Sophia brought her foot down in another kick that would knocked the wind out of me. I tried to knock her remaining leg out from under her while the other one was still in mid-kick, but she jumped back into her shadow state so that my hand whiffed through her.

She aimed that crossbow, having reloaded, and I rolled again before she could fire. The bolt hit the spot I'd been lying in an instant later. Coming to my feet, I threw the best punch I could. She didn't bother to use her shadow state that time, easily brushing it aside before hammering me in return with a punch that made my head reel back. I tasted blood in my mouth.

I swung twice more, but she just used her shadow state to render the attacks meaningless. Then she countered, hitting me three times in rapid succession, so quickly I could barely tell she was moving.

As I fell back, stumbling to one knee, Sophia just chuckled low. "What was that you were saying about an ass kicking?"

I murmured something quietly while looking down.

"What?" She demanded, raising one of her crossbows as she stepped closer, but not close enough for me to reach her. "What did you say, loser?"

I turned my head and spat blood before looking back up at her. "I said, check your costume." Then I held up my hand to show her what looked like a tiny joy buzzer in my palm.

Sophia blinked once, then looked down. Small battery sized clips were attached to both of her legs, one of her sleeves, and her waist. All the places I had put them while she took her time beating on me. "What-"

I pressed down on the buzzer, and every one of the clips responded by sending a jolt of electricity through Sophia, drawing a startled squeal from the other girl as she dropped to her side, her muscles suddenly giving out.

Shoving myself to my feet, I extended a hand toward Sophia. I attached a line to her mask and tore it away from her. "I don't want to fight Shadow Stalker." I informed her. "I want to fight Sophia Hess." Then I attached two more lines to each of her shoulders, using them to yank her up and toward me. She went into her shadow state, of course. But I triggered the electro buzzers again, and she screamed as they shocked her back into her physical state, just as I hauled off and punched her for real this time.

It hurt. It hurt my hand a lot. Ow. But it hurt her worse, both physically and emotionally. She reeled, once again trying to escape into her shadow state. She was trying to lose the stunners, but it wasn't working.

I triggered them again with a twitch of my hand, and Sophia screamed, her pain mixing with her outrage. She tried to lift her left crossbow, and I attached a line between it and a street light across the street, sending it flying off into the darkness.

Then she lifted her right crossbow. This time, I linked a line between the side of the weapon, and the collar of her costume. A slight yank on the line made the crossbow whip around and smack her upside the head.

She dropped the bow after staggering, and I attached two more lines to her gloves. The other ends of the lines I attached to her tiny stud earring on one side, and to the band she used to keep her hair out of her eyes on the other side. Then I yanked on one line, forcing her hand to whip up and smack herself in the side of the head. A yank on the other line brought her gloved hand around to deck herself in the face rather awkwardly.

Switching the ends of the lines so that they led to Sophia's chest and stomach, respectively, I made her hit herself over and over again. Sometimes I switched it around, changing hands and locations, but for the next several moments, Sophia Hess quite literally beat the crap out of herself. Every time she tried for her shadow state to shake my lines, a jolt from the buzzers stopped her.

I released her finally, and said quietly, "Are you ready to tell the truth?"

Instead, Sophia ran straight for me, animalistic rage on her face. I created two more lines, attached them to her knees, and waited until she was right in front of me. Then I gave a yank, hauling her down onto her knees as she skidded to a stop, before two more lines attached to her arms held them trapped at her sides.

Her mouth opened, a snarl at her bloodied and bruised lips, but I raised my foot and kicked her, releasing the lines so that she was knocked onto her side, dazed and reeling.

"That," I informed Sophia as she lay beaten on the ground. "was for Taylor."

I could see the shudder of revulsion run through her, and she raised her gaze to glare at me just before she spoke. "They won't believe you, bitch. My team. My team won't believe a word you say."

"Oh, I dunno..." I trailed off, staring down at Sophia, and making sure she was watching before I reached up and touched the communicator in my ear. "What do you think, Aegis?"

His voice came through the comms in both of our ears, so that Sophia could hear as well. "I think I'm trying to decide if I'm more appalled or amused that the first time she calls us her team is when she's definitely no longer a part of it."

I let myself breathe out one more time, releasing the tension inside me. "So you heard all of it. You got the whole thing?"

"Yup." That was Kid Win's voice. "We've got it all. She's done."

Four pairs of adult eyes glared at us from across the long table in the conference room. One adult for each of us. I wasn't sure if that was intentional, or if four just happened to be the number that they needed for this particular situation.

I recognized the two to the left, sitting together. Director Emily Piggot, the leader of the local PRT division and therefore the boss of the Wards, was a rather squat, heavy woman with obvious health problems and a permanent scowl. Next to her was the leader of the local Protectorate team, the tinker-hero Armsmaster. In almost any other situation, I would have been almost as giddy about meeting the top local hero as I had been to meet Legend. Unfortunately, this was not a time for giddiness.

The two that sat slightly to the right from Armsmaster and Piggot I didn't recognize. One was a rather hawkish looking older woman whose hair had long since grayed who had been introduced as Judge Heidi Truant, while the other was a very thin man who looked average save for his intense eyes, which hadn't stopped studying us since we entered the room. He was, apparently, Thomas Calvert, a former PRT consultant who was heading up a new internal security division that was just getting off the ground.

On my side of the table, besides myself, were Dennis, the brown haired Kid Win that I now knew as Chris, and the Hispanic boy Carlos that I previously knew only as Aegis. Both had introduced themselves before we'd come up with the plan to trap Sophia.

As for the psycho-girl herself, she was currently restrained in another room, along with her mother and a couple of PRT officers, waiting for the rest of us to be dealt with.

It was Director Piggot who spoke first, once we finished explaining everything. "Let me see if I understand this." Her voice was not amused. "You were all either witnesses to or had full knowledge of the continued dangerous and unstable behavior of a parahuman individual, who was _already_ on probation and whose actions had already resulted in at least one death, which she expressed little to no regret over." Her eyes narrowed at the boys. "Your actions at that point were not to simply alert one of your superiors, but to provide tinker-made weapons to an unauthorized individual, and then corner this unstable individual and _goad_ her into a confrontation, on the thin hope that she would say enough over the communicator to condemn herself. You-" She focused on me then. "-then engaged in a physical brawl with the unstable, dangerous individual in spite of being fully capable of subduing her without further damage to either of you, simply by using the previously mentioned tinker-made electrical devices."

"Have I summed this up properly, or is there another instance of abhorrent stupidity that I'm missing?"

I shifted in my seat, glanced at the boys, and then started to speak. But Carlos beat me to it. "We needed Sophia's confession, ma'am. Otherwise it would have been Madison's word versus Sophia's and her other friend, Emma Barnes, who already established that she wouldn't turn against Sophia. Two words versus one, can you honestly say that things would have gone our way?"

Director Piggot was clearly not impressed. "Had you involved the authorities, we could have established a similar scenario in which Madison would establish a conversation that resulted in Sophia's confession. Do you know what the difference would have been? _**We would have contained and controlled the situation.**_ We would have moved in to properly and safely bring Sophia in without any fight being necessary. No one would have been hurt." She gave me a pointed look, and I winced. The pain in my side, stomach, and face reminded me of just what she was referring to. When I'd glanced in the mirror while cleaning myself up, the nasty bruise and welt on the side of my head had made me never want to look in the mirror again.

"Director Piggot, that's not fair." Dennis spoke up. "How were we supposed to know if you'd take us seriously or not without evidence?"

Her response was an intense glare. "I find it interesting that you ask whether or not we would extend blind trust to you after you engage in behavior like this. Now unless you can answer the question of why a physical confrontation was necessary, be silent."

Armsmaster straightened, the corners of his mouth turned into a severe line of annoyance. I could only see the lower half of his face, since the helmet he wore covered the rest. "You wanted a fight, didn't you?" When I hesitated, he went on. "You wanted a fight because you wanted to beat her. She tormented you for months. She's made your life miserable every moment of school and any other time she saw you. On top of that, you found out that she was a member of the Wards, a hero. While you were suffering, while you were _coping_ with the ahhh... the other girl's death, she kept being a hero. So you wanted to win. You wanted to fight Sophia, so that you could beat her. So that she would _see you beat her._"

I opened my mouth and then shut it, as Armsmaster held up a gauntleted hand. "For once in your life, tell the truth. For your sake if no one else's. Did you _want_ that fight to happen and therefore purposefully ignore any other possible solution that didn't involve the opportunity for it?"

Swallowing, I looked down at the table, pausing as I thought about it. Then I nodded. "Yes, sir." I looked up. "I wanted to fight Sophia. I wanted to beat her."

"But you didn't." He observed. "You needed Kid Win's electrical devices to short out her power. You had to cheat, and even then it was his ability that truly beat her."

I met his gaze as best as I could, staring into his helmet. "With all due respect, sir, you're wrong. I did beat her. I beat her by working with the others, by working with Kid Win, her own teammate. She didn't trust them, she thought she was better than they were. So beating her was kind of their thing as well."

"If I might interject." The thin man spoke finally, after clearing his throat. "Who beat who is not the issue here. It seems to me that we have several situations to handle. The first is what to do with Miss Hess now. The second is what to do with Madison Clements here. And the third is what to do with other Wards who assisted her."

"Indeed." The hawk-faced old woman, Judge Truant, nodded. "Thank you, Mr. Calvert. Let us begin with Sophia. That seems to be a simple and straight forward situation. After hearing the recording obtained by the Wards, I believe it's clear that Miss Hess has obviously violated her probation, as well as being primarily responsible for the accidental death of young Taylor Hebert. To that end, her probation will be revoked and she will immediately be remanded to an appropriate juvenile detention facility for both the original assault and involuntary manslaughter for the case of Miss Hebert."

Unsure of the etiquette at a time like this, but wanting to play it safe, I raised my hand. When the judge looked to me, I asked, "Does that mean everyone's going to know what happened?"

"No." Judge Truant shook her head. "We have an established protocol for this sort of thing. Sophia's actual record will be sealed, and she will be taken to a special detention facility under another a fictional record whose sentence will be the equivalent of what she would have received under the actual crime."

"What if she tells someone who she really is?" I wanted to know. "I mean, that she's Shadow Stalker and what happened. Or, you know, the identities of anyone else that she knows and doesn't have anything to lose over now."

It was Director Piggot who answered the question. "First, she will be imprisoned only with other parahumans, or those otherwise related to the Wards or Protectorate system, since we do not imprison former heroes alongside career criminals for obvious reasons. Second, any revelation of any secret information will result in an extension of her sentence, and a move to solitary confinement."

"And if she does it anyway?" I pressed. "If she tells someone who Dennis is, or Carlos, or any of the others? Sophia isn't_stable_, Director. She doesn't think through consequences like that. She'll get pissed and she'll lash out the only way she can."

The woman glared at me for a moment, then looked down the table, first at Armsmaster, who just shrugged at her, and then the other way toward the judge and Mr. Calvert.

It was the latter who spoke, his intense eyes examining me. "Perhaps-"

My ears popped, suddenly and almost violently. It made me gasp, twitching backwards in my seat, while a shudder ran its way through my whole back, from the base of my spine to the top of my neck.

"Miss Clements." Mr. Calvert's attention was on me, and if I'd thought his eyes were intense before, they were almost burning now. He seemed to be committing every bit of me to memory. "Are you quite all right?"

I hesitated, unsure of what that feeling had been, before nodding. "Yes, sir. I just-"

Pain. Intense, unbelievable pain in my jaw and the back of my head. The briefest of images of Dennis on the floor, as quick as a flash of lightning across the sky, and myself shouting, screaming.

It seemed to last barely the length of a blink, and then it was gone, passing along another of those full body shudders. It hadn't even lasted long enough for me to react to the pain, other than to start in my seat.

This time it was Judge Truant who spoke. "Are you sure you're all right?" All of the adults were gazing intently at me, none more so than Mr. Calvert, who looked... curious.

I swallowed before nodding. The last thing I wanted was for them to think I was unstable, that there was any reason not to trust my word against Sophia's. "I'm fine. Just... it's been a long day." I gestured to the bruise on my face. "I probably need to lay down."

"We'll get through this as soon as possible." The older woman promised, before continuing. "So, Sophia will be taken to the detention facility, specifics to be filled in after we speak with her, her mother, and their lawyer. I promise you, however, that she will be detained for this."

"What about Emma?" I asked. "Emma Barnes, she was... well, she was a part of it. Both of us were."

"She'll be dealt with separately." Director Piggot announced. "Her father is already coming in to serve as Sophia's representation."

After a moment, I had to ask, "What about Mr. Hebert, Taylor's father?"

"What about him?" Armsmaster asked, a mixture of confusion and annoyance in his voice. He didn't want this dragged out any longer. "What does he have to do with this?"

"Everything." I said in disbelief. "Taylor was his daughter. Her death caused all of this. He deserves... closure."

Judge Truant made a soft sighing noise. "I understand your desire, Miss Clements. How about if we tell Mr. Hebert that his daughter's death was a result of a parahuman situation, and that the person responsible has been taken into custody? I'm afraid that's the best I can offer."

I hesitated, then nodded. It was the best I could hope for.

"Now, for you." The judge went on. "As a minor, you're going to have to bring at least one parent or guardian in on this. Assuming they agree, you'll become a member of the Wards and be subject to their rules and regulations regarding your activities, your compensation, all related merchandising profits, and so forth. If your parents disagree, this becomes more difficult. So you'll have to take this information to them and get them on board. Understand?"

I nodded again, swallowing. This was all happening really fast. I had no idea what I was going to say to my parents about... well, any of this at all.

"Good." Director Piggot slid some forms across the table to me. "Take all of these, read them through with your guardian, and fill in all the information before bringing them back with the guardian who is going to sign them."

As I took the forms, Judge Truant explained, "You've accepted your own part as an accessory in the death of Taylor Hebert. Assuming this enrollment goes through with your guardian, you will be on probation for one year. One year during which you will be a probationary member of the Wards. This committee, or a similarly designated group, will reconvene in one year to establish whether you should be allowed to continue as a full member of the system, or if more serious sentencing is needed."

I went through the paperwork, while the Judge continued. "Beyond your probationary sentence as a Ward, you will serve community service. In addition to the typical duties of every Ward such as patrol, which you will be expected to perform alongside the regular team members, you will work for two hours every Saturday, unless your official Wards duties intervene, on the grounds of Weatherfield Cemetery, until the committee reconvenes in one year. Again, this is subject to your guardian approving your enrollment."

Once I had finished as much as I could before I'd have to get mom or dad involved, my new teammates started to congratulate me, until Director Piggot cleared her throat nastily. She glared until everyone sat down, then spoke. "Finally, I am still disgusted by the actions of you boys. You should know better, _especially_ you, Carlos. You were team leader."

Noticing the choice of words, the boy opened his mouth, and she held up a finger. "Don't. Don't say a word. You've done enough. I'm removing you from your position of team leader for the next month. Gallant will be filling that role for the time being, since he's the only one of you of appropriate age that wasn't involved in this asinine situation. In a month, we'll see if you've learned your lesson or not." She gave him an even more severe look. "I do hope that you manage to impress me enough to regain your leadership position before you graduate, if you plan on continuing into the Protectorate and hope for a decent assignment."

I saw the Hispanic boy swallow before nodding.

"As for the two of you," Director Piggot focused on Dennis and Chris. "You'll be working alongside Madison in the cemetery for the next two months. And all four of you will be performing bathroom and kitchen cleaning duty, alternating weekends, in the Wards headquarters for the same amount of time. Assuming, of course, that nothing goes wrong with Madison joining the team. Does anyone have _anything_ else to say?"

All four of us shook our heads, and the adults stood. "Good." Director Piggot announced. "Now get out of my sight while we go and deal with Hess."

The Judge looked to me. "Clements, we have your sworn statement already. If we need you to testify, we'll let you know." The hawk-faced woman gave a thin smile. "We do know where you'll be."

As I nodded, Mr. Calvert stepped around the table and extended his hand toward me. His intense gaze hadn't left me since I'd shuddered the first time. "Madison Clements." He said my name as though committing it firmly to memory, extending a hand. I took it, and his grip was rather firm for such a thin man.

"Good luck. I'll be keeping an eye on your career."

**3.03**

Right. So. Mom and Dad. This was going to be... interesting.

Even as I stood in the back alley behind my house, papers from Director Piggot in hand, I tried rehearsing what I was going to say. I tried several variations to see how they sounded.

"So hey, Mom, you know how you always wanted me to get a job?"

"Dad, you remember when you told Trevor that he should join the PRT when he graduates because one of us should really give back to the community? Weeeeellll..."

"Guys, you'll never guess what happened on the way to school. I tripped and became a super hero. Sign this."

"Soooo uhhh, do we need anything from the store? I could swing by on my way to turning in these permission forms to join the Wards. Just initial here..."

"Hypothetically speaking, if Trevor witnessed a murder, never told you, became a superhero, and confronted the murderer, would you kill him? He told me to ask."

Turning, I let my head fall forward and down to bang against the side of the wooden fence that surrounded our property. It was a mistake. The pain from my previous injury rocketed through me, and I cried out reflexively.

"Madison?" The voice of my father on the other side of the fence interrupted my inner condemnations, and I cursed under my breath as the gate was unlatched and he came through. "I thought I heard you muttering to yourself out here. What are you doing out so late-"

He interrupted himself as he saw the bandage covering the side of my head, almost dropping the flashlight that he'd been using. "Madison!" Taking three quick steps, Dad put one hand on my shoulder and used two of his fingers to gently tilt my chin up so he could examine me with the flashlight. "What happened to you? Did this happen at Emma's or Sophia's? Why didn't they call us?"

My mouth opened, but no words came out. Funny, for as easy as it was for me to think up smart ass things to say in the heat of combat in spite of my lack of experience, facing my dad like this left me completely mute. My brain was running one of those test patterns that used to be on televisions decades ago before stations broadcast twenty-four seven.

Dad seemed to think he'd been too rough, and he immediately lessened his grip on my shoulder (one of the few places I actually wasn't sore), and lowered the volume of his voice. "Come on, Maddy, let's go sit down inside. Can you walk?"

"I... made it all the way home." I pointed out, mind still racing about what I was actually going to say.

Still, Dad felt the need to physically guide me across the back yard. At one point, he attempted to take the papers out of my hand so he could see what they were, but I clutched them tighter and shook my head. I wanted to talk this out with both of my parents together.

Eventually, Dad had me seated at the table, a glass of ice water in front of me, while he woke my mother up. He hadn't wanted to at first, but I pressed him until he did.

When she came down the stairs, Mom was in her bathrobe, her eyes a little red from tiredness, and, I guessed, from annoyance. She was squinting without her glasses, which she hadn't bothered to put on. "Why aren't you in bed?" She demanded, her voice a little hoarse.

Mom wasn't all that bad. I actually had pretty decent parents, all things considered. There was really no way that I could blame my previous bullying on neglect or even actual abuse at home or anything. I guess some kids just act out, even without a traumatic home life. It was just really late, and she didn't like being woken up. I could relate, considering I'd much rather have been in bed than having this conversation.

"Trish, look at her head." Dad passed Mom her glasses so that she could see better, and then pulled the chair out for her.

Once she had her glasses on, Mom made a little noise of surprise and then stepped to me. "What happened? What is this?" Her hands moved to the papers that I'd laid on the table, and this time I let them be taken. "Read them together." I said quietly.

They did, looking over the forms in between glancing up at me. After a few moments, Dad spoke up. "These are... contracts to join the Wards. But you can't join the Wards. They only take people with powers. That's the whole point."

I just stared at him until he thought it all the way through. A moment later, his eyes widened. "... oh my god." There, he had it. "You don't mean that..."

Glancing toward the kitchen counter, I connected a line between the loaf of bread there, and the table in front of me. The bread flew across the distance and landed on the table, and both of my parents jaws hit the floor.

"No, no, no." Mom was saying. She was shaking her head so quickly that I was startled by her actual vehemence at the idea. "No, you don't have powers. This isn't real. This isn't happening."

"Mom." I said quietly. "It's real. It's okay, I-"

"No!" Her raised voice wasn't so much a shout as an emphatic hiss. "It is not okay. It is not real. Because I know how powers come out. I know how they happen. They happen when something... something horrible and traumatic and... and mind breaking happens to someone, and something like that, something that bad, **did not happen to my daughter**. It can't. I would have noticed, I'm not that stupid, not that... wrapped up in myself, am I?"

Swallowing, I closed my eyes and then gave a little shudder before opening them again. "I have to tell you some things. You're not going to like a lot of them. I don't either. I just... I have to tell you the truth. Please, let me tell you the truth, all of it, before you... before you interrupt."

Mom and Dad both looked at one another before nodding to me. I took a breath, then started to talk.

I told them everything that I could. I started by explaining how Sophia, Emma, and I had treated Taylor, including examples that made my throat catch, and both of my parents stare at me as if they had no idea their daughter could be so cruel. It hurt. It hurt so much, to be looked at that way, but I went on. I pressed forward, telling them what happened on the day that Taylor had died. I told them all of it, both the fact that I hadn't wanted to do it, but that I hadn't really done anything to stop it either. I told them about my guilt after learning what happened, and that I'd wanted to tell the truth then. And I told them about Sophia being Shadow Stalker, since Director Piggot and Judge Truant had agreed that there was absolutely no way to tell this story without including that detail. I explained how she had threatened me, how my fear of her and guilt over the whole situation had caused my trigger.

Once I'd gotten through all that, I chanced a glance up. Both of my parents were staring at me, clearly shell-shocked. I quickly moved on after taking a gulp of water, and explained how I'd learned what my powers were and how to use them, and that I'd dressed up and gone out on my own. Both went from staring in shock to glaring at me for that one, but I kept going. I went on, omitting certain... details such as my direct involvement in the Panacea rescue (Even if still not telling Dad that I'd met Legend really killed me. I was going to have to find a way to work that in later), and a couple other things that I thought were better off not being shared. And of course, I left out everyone else's real identity.

Moving on, I told them about Clockblocker figuring out who I was and how he'd gotten me to tell him the truth. Then I went on to how we had trapped Sophia, glossing a bit over the fight except to say that she'd taken me by surprise (It was true, I'd had no idea she could turn around that fast), and that she was in custody now.

Finally, I explained the deal with the PRT, the punishment I had agreed to, and what was expected from them.

Once I was finished, and wiped the tears out of my eyes that had started about halfway through, both Mom and Dad simply stared at me for a long, silent moment. Finally, Dad stood up, stepped around the table, and took my hand. He pulled me out of my seat until I was standing, and then embraced me. His hug was tight. "Maddy, I had no idea you were going through something like that. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Missing something this... this terrible, making you go through it alone..."

"It's not your fault, Dad." I started to say. "You didn't-"

"Yes, it is." He insisted. "I'm your father. I'm your dad. It's my job to take care of you, and it's definitely my job to notice when my kid's going through something this insane. I didn't notice, and I'm sorry."

Before I could respond to that, Mom had me. Her embrace was even tighter than Dad's, and she kissed my cheek. "My baby..." She all but cooed, rather embarrassingly.

They both looked at each other, and Dad spoke. "You need to give us a few minutes here, Mads. Go sit in the living room while we talk, okay?"

I hesitated, then nodded and moved through the kitchen. The living room was dark, and I switched on the lamp next to the couch before curling up at one corner. My fingers brushed at a magazine there, but I'd barely glanced at the cover before my eyes were closed.

My dad woke me up some time later with a hand against my shoulder. When I blinked up at him, he spoke softly. "You want to talk some more, or are you ready for bed?"

I swallowed, straightening before giving a nod. "I can talk. I'd rather get through this."

Mom sat down next to me, drawing me up against her, while Dad sat in the chair across from the couch. He was the one who spoke first. "Madison, the idea that you could... that you could act the way that you're telling us you acted toward this Taylor girl is... it's obscene. It sounds like some other kid, not you. Why would you do that? Why would you treat someone like that?"

My mouth opened, and then I stopped. I took a breath and then let it out. "Because it made me feel powerful. Because it made me feel accepted. Because as long as Sophia liked me, she was funny and charming and she talked to me like _I was special_. She'd talk like... like it was obvious that we were better and it just... made sense when she said it. I let things... get out of control because I liked the feeling it gave me."

Both of my parents glanced to each other again, and I felt Mom squeeze me tighter. She spoke then. "We're so... disappointed, Madison. Disappointed that you ever acted that way, that you let it get so far that a girl died. We love you. Don't ever doubt that. Your dad and I are always going to love you, no matter what. But... but we wish you'd done better, here. We really wish you were better than that."

I felt the tears start to fall again, and shook my head, not trusting my voice. Mom reacted by hugging me even tighter, repeating, "We love you, baby. We love you."

Dad reached across and took my hand, squeezing it before he spoke. "We're going to deal with this, together."

Mom nodded, pressing a kiss to the top of my head. "You'll do the community service. You'll do all of it. And on top of that, you're going to help out here. That garden that Dad was talking about putting in the back yard this summer? You're going to take care of it. You're going to plant it, weed it, water it, prune it, everything. It's your job and no one else's. Okay?"

I just nodded, pressing myself a little more against my mother's side while squeezing Dad's hand in return.

"We'll sign you into the Wards, because they can help you with your powers, and it sounds like your powers are going to draw you toward danger anyway." Dad continued. "We'd prefer it be with professionals and a team. That said, Maddy, you will be careful. You'll do everything they tell you to do, and we will be checking in. If we have to, we'll yank you out of there and you'll just do the community service. Even if we have to lock you in your room until you're thirty. Do you understand me?"

I gulped a little, then gave another nod. "Yes, Daddy."

He smiled faintly, and gave my hand one last squeeze. "There's more, but that's enough for now. We'll sign the forms and then all of us will go in and talk to this... Director Piggot tomorrow. Or-" He glanced at the clock and winced. "Later today, I guess."

Both of them gave me one last hug. As I was walking to the stairs to go to my room, Dad asked, "What was your ahhh, cape name again?"

I flushed a little in spite of everything that had already been said. "Uh, Tether." Then I started to walk again.

This time it was Mom's voice that stopped me. "Those powers you have. They're... pretty neat, aren't they?"

I looked at my mom, then at my dad, and then I smiled very faintly. "Yeah." I said softly. "They're pretty cool sometimes."

**3.04**

The next day, at a little after one in the afternoon, I was sitting right back in the same conference room that I'd been in the night before, facing three of the same faces. Judge Truant, Director Piggot, and Mr. Calvert were all back, though Armsmaster had pleaded off on his own Protectorate business.

My side of the table was even more different. Sitting on either side of me were my parents, and Director Piggot's scowl was somehow less effective against my father's stoic silence.

He and my mother had both been quiet since we walked in. Or, to be precise, my father had asked if our lawyer had arrived yet. Upon being told that he wasn't there, my father's firm order to me had been not to say a word until Aaron showed up.

Then we waited. Through Director Piggot's attempt to start a conversation, my father had simply said that he was waiting for his legal council. The director had tried to say something about that, but Judge Truant had put a hand on her arm to stop her.

Minutes passed. The judge took out a pocket computer and seemed to be working through a scheduling system. Mr. Calvert alternated between studying me and making notes in a small notebook. My mother busied herself asking me mundane things about school in a transparent attempt to hold my attention. And the whole time, my father and Director Piggot engaged the most epic of staring contests.

Finally, there was a knock on the door. Mr. Calvert stood to answer it. When the door was opened, the man I knew as Dad's old best friend from college came into the room. He was a big, broad chested man with a full head of blond hair that he wore in a short ponytail. Honestly, except for his suit, he looked more like biker than a lawyer.

"Sorry, sorry 'bout that, folks." Dad's buddy was from someplace in the south, and his accent was light from all the years he had spent away from there, but still noticeable. Dad said he played it up at times to give juries the impression of an old hometown lawyer. "Had a right long meeting to get through before this."

Extending a hand toward the others, he introduced himself. "Aaron Anderson Tourney." He shook Mr. Calvert's hand, then Judge Truant's. Once the introductions went around the table, he announced, "I'll be representing the Clements, just making sure everything stays nice and above board."

Director Piggot frowned at that rather than shaking his hand. "Things are settled already. What could your services possibly be needed for?"

Taking a seat on our side of the table, Mr. Tourney dropped his briefcase in front of him, unsnapped the clasps, and withdrew several papers. "To begin with, we will no longer be dealing with you, Director Piggot."

The woman gave him an annoyed look. "Excuse me? I'm afraid that isn't up for debate. My job as Director of PRT East-North-East includes handling all matters related to the signing of new Wards. Now if you could just be quiet and look at-"

Mr. Tourney interrupted with a pointed cough. "Ah, sorry to interrupt, ma'am, but there's a bit of a, ahhh, minor hiccup with that assessment, as such." While Piggot gave him her best withering glare, he just extracted the paper that he'd been looking for. "Your, ahh, responsibilities no longer include the Wards."

Piggot's voice rose in sudden anger. "_I beg your pardon?_"

In response, the lawyer simply passed the paper across the table to Judge Truant. "If you'll examine this, you'll see what I'm talking about."

The judge took the paper and looked it over, while I turned to stare open mouthed at each of my parents in turn. They hadn't been back to bed by the time I'd finally woken up that morning. I'd known they had been busy, but I hadn't expected anything like _this_.

"It's an order from Director Costa-Brown." Truant announced after reading through the paper. "In response to your negligence in the Sophia Hess situation, your authority over the Wards in this area is being revoked. A new Wards director will be appointed after a brief internal reviewing process. Until that time, Mr. Calvert is to play double duty while his own division is being established." The hawk-faced woman glanced up at Piggot, who was staring at her open mouthed. "Your... position as director in general will remain, pending a full review of what happened."

"This... this is outrageous!" Director Piggot very nearly had steam exploding from her ears. "I am not the one on trial here." She whirled on Calvert. "Thomas, I swear, if I find out you had anything to do with this-"

For the first time in many minutes, my father spoke up. "Let me tell you what's outrageous. Sophia Hess getting away with as much as she did, while she was supposedly under probation, is outrageous. A girl with as many psychological issues as she clearly had being allowed to continue to throw herself into dangerous situations that only exacerbated the problem is outrageous. That no one, not a single person under your leadership noticed that girl's psychotic behavior is outrageous."

Lifting his hand from the table, Dad continued. "Let's be absolutely clear here. If I was that girl's parents, I'd be suing this entire department. Because she had issues, but-" He jabbed a finger across the table, pointing directly at Director Piggot."_**You**_ failed to address them. She had problems, but it was your job to help her, and you couldn't do that. You couldn't do your job, and I'll be damned if I'm going to have my daughter risking her life under your authority. You failed Sophia Hess. You will not fail my daughter. I won't give you the chance to. I had my attorney here contact Director Costa-Brown's office, and she agreed."

Director Piggot was making a noise that I couldn't identify, but it sounded like she was about to explode. "I am... I have... you can't do this. This is a witch hunt."

It was Mr. Tourney who replied to that. "Well now, the fact is, it may be a witch hunt. But you happen to be standing there with a big black hat, broom in your hand, warts on the end of your nose. Makes finding a witch pretty darn easy."

The squat woman slammed her hand down on the table with a bang. "This is tripe! I've done this job for over ten years. I've overseen dozens of Wards passing into the Protectorate."

My mother, speaking for the first time, managed to inject more dismissive scorn in three words than Piggot had managed throughout the entire time I'd known her. "Those poor teenagers."

I thought I saw Mr. Calvert smile just a little, before he cleared his throat. "Ah, assuming the paper from the Director's office is in order, judge, I think our hands are tied."

Shooting her fellow PRT suit a face-melting glare, Piggot stood from the table so violently she nearly knocked her seat over. "I'll be calling the Director myself."

"Please do." My father invited. "I'm sure you and she have a lot to talk about."

Once the woman had stormed from the room and slammed the door behind her, Mr. Tourney began pulling more papers from his briefcase. "Now that we can move on, we'll need to go over these agreements. Paul-" he gestured to my dad. "-faxed over what you sent home with Madison, and there's just a few changes we'll be making. I don't think you should have any problems. Just putting specifics on what happens if her schoolwork falls, what sort of Wards responsibilities outweigh her community service commitment and how missing those hours will be made up, that sort of thing. Also a few notes about her image, future merchandising, and a couple of safety concerns."

Before Mr. Calvert or Judge Truant could respond to that, Mr. Tourney pressed on. "Of course, eventually we'll also be having a discussion with the school district officials about their failure to address the bullying so that it escalated this far, and we'll need all the records you can provide about Sophia Hess's probation and what was _supposed_ to be done to keep an eye on her. After all, we need to know what orders were laid out before we know just how much Winslow's faculty failed in _their_ responsibilities."

He gave the remaining two PRT officials a smile. "I'm sure we'll be out of here in no more than a couple hours." 

By the time everything was signed and done, my parents questions had all been answered, and my parents had said their thanks and goodbyes to Mr. Tourney, it had been hours. We were all starving, so Dad made a trip through the Wendy's drive-thru.

Trevor started to complain the second that we walked in. "Why does _she_ get fast food? Is anybody gonna tell me why she didn't have to go to school today? Does she ever have to do anything?"

Mom passed a sack to him pointedly. "There's food for you too, Trev." She glanced at me a little questioningly, and I shook my head. I didn't want to tell Trevor the truth. Not that I didn't trust my brother, but he tended to **act** without thinking, and the last thing I needed was Trevor to get into an argument with someone and blurt out that his sister was a member of the Wards.

Filling his mouth with fries, Trevor made a grunt of acknowledgment. "So why didn't the squirt have to go to school? Where've you guys been all day?"

"We had an appointment, Trevor." Dad informed him. "That's all you need to know. It's your sister's private business."

Trevor rolled his eyes and gave me a look. "Pretty fun being the family pet, isn't it?"

"That's enough, Trevor." Mom told him sharply. "Sit down and eat."

It wasn't until we had all sat down around the table with the bags of food that Trevor blinked up. "How come you're all dressed up?" Mom was wearing a nice dress, Dad had one of his church suits on, and I had worn a skirt and a pretty blue blouse.

Dad grunted a little, eating a fry. "Like I said, we had a meeting, Trevor." He changed the subject then. "What've you been up to today?"

My brother snapped his fingers, his mouth full of burger as he responded. His words were completely incomprehensible, and both of our parents gave him reproving looks until he swallowed and repeated himself. "Oh that's right, you guys didn't hear. It's all over PHO."

I blinked at the mention of the popular Parhumans Online forum. "What's all over PHO?"

"Shadow Stalker." Trevor replied. "She's off our Wards team." In the years since the Protectorate and subsequently the Wards had been established, keeping track of team members had become as much of an obsession as the team rosters for professional sports teams. Most people saw a local Protectorate or Wards division as being 'their team', and even invented rivalries between various teams. A cape going from one beloved team to that town's 'rivals' was news for months, and had even resulted in heated arguments about that cape's 'betrayal'.

Hesitating, I chewed on my food briefly before venturing, "Why would she be leaving?"

Trevor shrugged, taking a bite of his burger. "Nobody knows, but they already confirmed that she's transferring to some other team somewhere for 'intense training'. And get this, somebody said that new girl that was helping the Wards during the Undersider thing is joining up instead, taking her place."

"How did they-" I started to blurt before flushing a little at a look from my dad. "How would someone find out something like that? I mean, it doesn't sound like it was officially announced or anything."

Again, Trevor just shrugged absently and ate another fry. "You know they've got people that leak that stuff. They probably did it on purpose to explain why Stalker ain't gonna be around anymore, and to prop up their new member."

"New member?" Dad asked lightly, smiling across the table at our mother. "Who was she again?"

Trevor squeezed more ketchup onto his fries. "They're saying her name's Tether."

"Hmm." Mom replied with a straight face. "I wonder how she'll be. We could use another good cape." She eyed me. "Maybe the other Wards can be a good influence."

Yeah, Mom failed at subtlety, but Trevor was still oblivious. "I know one thing for sure."

Taking my soda, I asked, "What's that?"

I made the mistake of taking a long gulp while he was answering. "I've seen the pictures they have of that Tether chick from the prison break thing, and she's **definitely** cuter than Shadow Stalker."

As it turns out, it _is_ possible to spit-take and dry heave at the same time.

**3.05**

"He did not."

"I swear on my honor as a Ward, he said it."

"You've been a Ward for like, three minutes."

"Good, so I haven't messed up my honor. It's brand spiffy new."

"That's true, our honor doesn't tend to last long."

It was the next evening, and Dennis and I were walking through the building that housed the PRT. It was the same building that I'd been in twice now for meetings, but this time I was here for a different reason. It was time for me to 'officially' meet the rest of my new team.

Since we were still in public areas, I was in costume, mask on, alongside Dennis in his Clockblocker get-up. Every once in a while, I glanced sidelong at it. His costume was actually pretty cool, being a skintight white bodysuit overlaid with armor panels which had animated clock faces either ticking or drifting across various parts, and a smooth white panel where his face would be.

"So you're telling me that, right in front of your parents, your brother said that you were cute."

My face reddened slightly under my own exceedingly simple mask, as I nodded. "Yeah, pretty much."

"What was your dad's reaction?" Dennis asked while leading me through the mostly empty corridors and toward an unlabeled elevator with an imposing amount of gadgets and security systems surrounding it.

"I'm not sure." I admitted. "I was busy trying not to throw up. Convinced Trevor I swallowed wrong. And then I said I had to use the bathroom and got the hell out of the room."

Dennis was snickering, so I elbowed him. I immediately regretted it. "Ow. Move your armor so I can hit you."

He considered for a moment before shaking his head. "Um, no. No thanks. I'm good."

We filed onto the elevator, and I folded my arms. I was trying not to be too nervous. After all, I'd worked with the Wards a couple of times already. This was just my first _official_ meeting, and my first time in their—err- our headquarters. Apparently it would normally be Director Piggot's job to show me around, but she'd lost her authority. That meant it would fall to Mr. Calvert, but he was also busy getting his new division up and running. Armsmaster or one of the other Protectorate members also could have done it, but he had leapt at Clockblocker's offer to give me the welcoming tour, so here we were.

Head cocked to the side while the elevator descended, Dennis took his helmet off and spoke up while shaking out his red hair. "Soooo, it's been like, four days."

I blinked at that, pulling my hood back before taking the mask off myself. "Four days?"

He grinned at me. "Since I loaned you those books. You got all offended when I suggested it would take you a whole week to read them. Finished yet?"

Staring, I managed to sound as droll as possible. "You know, I've had a couple other things occupying my mind."

"Pssshhh." Dennis waved a hand dismissively. "Excuses excuses."

I chose the mature, reasonable response and stuck my tongue out at him.

"Interesting choice." He observed. "Sophia would've flipped me off." He paused then before amending. "And by that I mean flip me off a bridge."

Making a face at him, I retorted, "Well if you miss Sophia so much..."

"Hell no!" He said quickly, his eyes widening at the implication. "No way, I was just... observing. I'd much rather work with you. Less chance of getting stabbed with a bolt for looking at you cross-eyed."

The elevator reached the Wards level, revealing a short corridor that led to an even more impressive looking steel door with a security terminal next to it.

Dennis tapped the scanner. "Give it a shot."

I raised an eyebrow, clutching my mask in one hand. "You think I'm in the system already?"

His head cocked backwards nonchalantly. "Might as well try. Worse comes to worse, we spend some time trapped in foam until they cut us out."

"_That could happen?!" _I squeaked.

He laughed at that. "No. Err, probably not. Unlikely." Still, I noticed that he took a step back while eying the blank walls surrounding us rather suspiciously.

Muttering under my breath, I leaned up to the scanner. As soon as I was near it, the thing beeped twice as it scanned me, then the steel doors almost silently whisked open to reveal the room beyond.

"After you." Dennis announced, making a sweeping gesture.

"You're just saying that in case this is a tinker trick to make the person think they've gotten past the security, at which point they step through the door and get foamed into next Tuesday." I huffed while moving through the doorway.

Luckily, there was no foam. There _was_ an amazing room beyond. I'd seen it before, of course, on tours. Or at least, I'd seen it from the visitor's viewing area, the parts of the room we were allowed to see. This was different. This was more.

It looked a bit like a dome, save for various parts of the wall that could be taken out and reassembled to change the dimensions. There were parts of the area that had been walled off this way to create individual quarters for when the Wards needed to sleep over for whatever reason, as well as to hold their belongings. There was also a section for the showers and a few other rooms.

In the main room, where we were, I could see a set of computers taking up one side of the room, surrounded by several chairs. One of the monitors listed 'Time Until Next Tour' with a timer that was currently at sixteen hours and twelve minutes. It made sense in hindsight. The Wards had to have a warning so that they could either put their masks on or leave the main viewing area before a tour group passed by the viewing area.

Chris and Carlos were sitting at the computers, the former doing something on Twitter, while the latter seemed to be playing a game of some kind. Both turned around when Dennis and I came through, and stood before starting to applaud.

I blinked at that. "Uhhh..."

Behind me, Dennis was clapping as well. I turned to squint at him. "Okay, I know getting a new team member is kind of cool, but I haven't done anything applause worthy."

"Oh this has nothing to do with you joining the team." Dennis corrected me. "You got rid of Piggy. She hated capes. She hated us. Every little excuse to mess with us, she took it."

"Oh." I shrugged. "That wasn't me. That was my parents. Clap for them."

A handsome, rather tall boy emerged from one of the back areas. He rolled his eyes at the others before extending a hand to me. "Dean Stansfield." I'd met him as Gallant, and the others hadn't given away his identity when we did our planning. "Glad to see you join the team." He gave me a winning smile that I was absolutely certain had already melted dozens of hearts. It helped that he seemed genuinely nice.

I shook his hand. "Um, Madison Clements." I introduced myself rather awkwardly.

"You know, you're a lot more talkative behind the mask." Chris, Kid Win, observed from where he'd resumed his seat.

The note made my cheeks flush slightly, tempting me to put the mask back on. I resisted, shrugging at the tinker-boy. "You have to admit it's a lot to take in."

"Sure, I guess." He admitted. "It's been awhile since I joined. Missy's even more experienced though, funny as that is."

"Missy?" I echoed briefly before realizing who he meant.

Sure enough, a girl in her early teens that I half-recognized as Vista without her armor and costume (wearing drawstring pants and a simple tee shirt instead), stepped into view and stood next to Gallant—err—Dean. "That's me." She seemed to be studying me for a moment, as though trying to decide where we stood, or how I was going to be.

After the slightest hesitation, I strolled that way. "So hey, you distort space, right? Can you bend it?"

Missy blinked at the question. "Not as far as I can stretch or compress it, but sure, why?"

"I was thinking," I glanced to the others before going on. They were all watching me. It was a bit nerve wracking, but I tried to ignore it. "My tethers connect two objects. I just have to be able to see them. If we can work together, we might be able to do some cool stuff with that. If you wanna, you know, test it out sometime."

There was the briefest of pauses, before Missy smiled a little bit and nodded. "Sure. We can... try it sometime."

I saw Dean give me an approving nod as well. "Always good to have plans. So you showed her around yet?" He asked Dennis.

The other boy shook his head. "Just this area. Come on, Mads, I'll let you see the rest of this place."

We took a brief tour of the area, Dennis showing me where my bunk area was for if and when I ended up needing it. By the time we got back out to the main area, Missy was sitting in a corner reading a book, while Chris was checking over the various security camera feeds that lay throughout the city that the Wards had access to. Carlos and Dean were engaged in some kind of intense video game match.

Apparently Dean won, because Carlos cursed and shoved his chair back. "Little more practice. Just a little more. I almost had you."

They noticed us then, and Dean used the opportunity to segue, "And speaking of practice... ahhh, dude, seriously, you should do this."

Carlos shook his head at the other side of the room. "Piggot demoted me, remember?"

Dennis snorted. "And then she got herself demoted. You're the leader, everyone knows it. For a few months anyway."

"Yeah, then I turn eighteen and pass the leadership toooo..." Carlos twirled his finger around and then pointed at Dennis next to me. "You."

"Yeah, for not even the rest of the summer." Dennis shot back. "Then I graduate to the Protectorate as well and Dean takes the lead."

I frowned at that. "Leadership is by eldest? Why not, I dunno, the best leader?"

"Hell if we know." Chris shrugged, moving away from the security monitor to a table in the corner where a pile of components and half-built guns lay. "Just the way they do things. Screw the Undersiders or the ABB, Bureaucracy is like, our number one super villain."

Carlos pushed himself up from the seat once more. "Anyway, what Dean was getting at is that we're going to have to train you. Physically train you. Do you know any actual fighting techniques or systems?"

Shifting a little, I had to shake my head. "Not... so much. I'm kind of really new at... well, everything. Sophia was the tomboy in our Bitch Trio. Emma was the popular model-cheerleader type."

"Which one were you?" Missy asked from where she was sitting, curiously.

I bit my lip. "The cute, innocent one that plays up her naivety so the teachers leave her alone." They all gave me looks, and I threw up my hands. "I know! I'm trying to change."

Dean was the one who spoke, his voice easy and reassuring. "You're doing a good job of it. Especially with the way you helped bring in Lung. That was impressive."

"Sure was." Carlos agreed. "But you're still gonna have to learn how to fight. We'll run you through some basics, whoever has time when you're available. Trust me, it's gonna suck at first. You're going to have to work your butt off to get in shape, and you're gonna get thrown around the mat for awhile." He gave me a serious look. "But it's worth it. You need to be able to depend on more than just your powers. Plus it'll help you learn to use your powers in new ways."

"I'm all for new experiences." I said slowly before shrugging. "So I guess teach away."

"Oh you're not ready for me yet." Carlos shook his head. "I'll test you when you've got at least a little practice under your belt."

I looked toward Dean, Chris, and Dennis, all of whom were shaking their heads and smiling knowingly. Finally, my gaze landed on Missy, who was already stretching out next to a set of floor pads in the corner. When I glanced her way, she smiled and waved at me before beckoning me over. I hesitated, then shrugged and walked that way.

Roughly four seconds later, I was on my back with Missy holding one of my arms in a way that made it impossible to move without sending pain shooting up into my wrist.

"Welcome to the Wards!" The boys chorused.

**Interlude 3 – Sundancer**

The voices of two teenage girls filled the air of the bedroom as they sang together. It was a song born not of skill or particular intent, but from simple enjoyment. Neither girl would ever be a professional, though the pretty, tall blonde had definite training while the shorter brunette's voice squeaked occasionally. Both sang together for no one other than themselves, watching the karaoke machine in the corner.

"_You are my sunshine, my only sunshine."_

Marissa Newland loved times like these, when her overbearing mother was away, or too busy to push her daughter into the next big thing. Marissa's mother was obsessed with finding the one perfect thing that her little girl could be the best at, the thing that she could do better than anyone else.

"_You make me happy when skies are grey."_

They hadn't found it yet. Which wasn't to say that Marissa was terrible. She just happened to be second, third, or fourth best at most things she tried, no matter how hard she worked. She was driven, an inevitability given her upbringing, but it was never enough to be number one. And being number two was never enough for her mother. It was number one or nothing. Number one, or she hadn't tried hard enough, hadn't worked hard enough, hadn't taken it seriously enough. Not counting the times the pressure had been too much and she'd cracked. Never completely losing it, but just cracking enough that it was noticeable and her mother had yanked her out of that activity. Because she wasn't good enough.

"_You'll never know dear..."_

On the next line, her eyes involuntarily glanced sideways toward the other girl. Noelle. Her friend. Her... And then another moment passed, where Marissa failed to tell her friend the truth, even as she spoke the exact words that she was too afraid to say in any other situation.

"_... how much I love you..."_

Both teenage girls fell backwards onto Marissa's bed, one at either end, the karaoke mikes in their hands as they belted the words.

"_Please don't take my sunshine away!"_

"Sundancer!" Marissa's shoulder was shaken, snapping her out of the memory from years ago. Years before everything that had happened. Years before the Simurgh. Before Chris had died. Before they'd been stranded on this... this _wrong_Earth. Before they'd taken the formulas and gained their abilities in order to survive. Before Noelle had become... what she was.

Genesis was in front of her, saying her name. Not the real Genesis, of course. Jess was sound asleep, back at the base. The stout, winged gargoyle thing in front of her was her projection.

"Are you all right? The truck's almost here." Genesis pointed a claw down the steep embankment toward the lonely highway that the two of them were waiting on. In the distance, a pair of headlights approached.

"I'm..." _Losing myself. Forgetting where Marissa Newland stops and Sundancer begins. Crying myself to sleep at night when no one can see me because I'm so lonely. Because I miss Noelle and she's not even gone. Just... different. Because I'm a coward who can't speak up and tell people how I really feel. Because the girl who convinced me to finally stand up to my mother, put my foot down, and refuse to jump into another of her plans for me is __**changing**__, has changed so much that I'm not sure it's really her in there anymore or a creature staring back out at us, using her memories to manipulate us. I'm terrified that the girl I'm trying so hard to save is already gone, but if I voice that, I'm giving up on her. Which I can't do._ "I'm fine." She lied. She was always lying now, even to her friends.

Genesis was staring at her, Jess staring at her through the eyes of her dream projection. But she didn't say anything else. There wasn't time. The truck was passing just below them.

Ahead on the freeway, Ballistic stepped onto the road, directly in front of the truck. He held a pair of rocks in either hand. Before the armored truck could react, both of the stones were injected with his power, and rocketed toward the truck. Each stone blew through either front tire, continuing on through to blow through the rear tires.

The truck came crashing down onto the rims, skidding across the road as it kicked up a shower of sparks, the grinding metal deafening. Finally, the ruined vehicle screeched to a halt barely a dozen feet from where her teammate still stood.

By then, Ballistic had been joined on the road by Trickster, the top hat sitting atop his red face mask distinctive. Trickster gazed at the two men in the front of the truck for just a moment. Then he was gone, replaced by one of the now-confused armored transport drivers, who stood there blinking next to Ballistic for a second. Then Ballistic was gone as well, replaced by the second guard from the front of the truck as Trickster used his power to switch them.

In the mean time, Genesis had launched her gargoyle form into the air, gliding down to the back of the truck. Her hefty clawed hands grasped the doors and then she ripped it off. Two gunshots followed, impacting the gargoyle figure to no effect, as Genesis crawled up into the back of armored truck for a moment. Then she was out, carrying the third and last guard away to safety.

While she had been watching this course of events, Marissa had been focusing on summoning her personal little sun into being between her hands.

Using her power always reminded her of that time in her room with Noelle. The time before everything had happened, before everything had gone wrong. The song. That stupid, silly little song that had somehow become so important to her in the wake of her power. She whispered a few of the words to herself now. It helped her concentrate on the power.

_"You are my sunshine... my only sunshine..."_

Genesis, by that point, had carried the third guard to meet the others. It would keep the three in a group, and she was more than capable of keeping them in line.

The sun-like orb grew with each passing second, until it was almost as large as the truck itself. Marissa let the orb start to rise up above her, floating through the air gradually while the guards, who had oriented themselves, drew their weapons. She positioned the sun in between the guards and the truck, blocking their line of sight to it to prevent any of them from noticing when Trickster and Ballistic slipped out of the truck and moved to the back of the truck. Trickster took a step to the side, getting the back of the truck and the group on the hill in sight, and a second later Marissa found herself sitting in the back of the truck. The heavily sedated prisoner would have been taken to her place.

She slipped out, joining Trickster and Ballistic on the road. A glance up the hill showed the unconscious form of the prisoner. Convinced that the truck was now empty, Marissa brought the sun down on top of it.

The large ball of intense heat made short work of the armored vehicle, and by the time it was done, Genesis had the three PRT officers on the ground. She had only inflicted light injuries, being as gentle as possible.

"Gentlemen!" Trickster announced as he led Marissa and Ballistic around the burning hunk of wreckage once the miniature sun had been banished. "I'm glad to see none of you were too terribly harmed."

"What... what did you do?" One of the PRT officers demanded. "We were transporting a prisoner."

"You were transporting a murderer." Trickster corrected him. "As it happens, our employer doesn't believe in granting second chances to someone who wears the uniform of a hero and then murders an innocent little girl. He refused to let her go and sit in a cushy prison cell. We did the job you couldn't. Shadow Stalker will never be a problem for anyone again."

It was a bit of theater, of course. The whole point had been to extract the girl while making the guards believe that she'd been killed. It was important that everyone believe that the girl was dead.

"And you're certain that they believed the story." Coil stood in the medical wing of his underground lair where the four Travelers had gathered. His eyes were on the unconscious teenager strapped to the table in front of him, while another figure stood bent over the girl's side, doing something with a bit of medical equipment.

Trickster nodded, speaking for the group. "Yes. They believe we were hired by someone who wanted her to be killed for what she did to that other girl. Any luck, they'll start looking at the girl's father and move from there."

"Good." Coil lifted his gloved hand, gently stroking it down the side of the unconscious psychopath's face. "Sophia Hess and I have many things to discuss. Plans to make."

He turned to look at the other person in the room. "Your job is finished?"

"Damn straight it is." The clearly Asian young woman with the hood and dark red goggles announced, turning away from the unconscious form of Shadow Stalker. "Your girl's all rigged up." She extended a hand, passing a tiny remote to Coil, who took it. "One step out of line and she's a fine red mist."

"Good." Coil tucked the remote away. "You can leave now."

"Actually." The bombmaker, Bakuda, sounded like she was smiling. Not that Marissa could see beyond the gas mask that the woman wore. "I was thinking I'd charge you triple for this job."

Coil went still for just a second, and Marissa could tell he was annoyed. "Is that right?"

"Sure." Bakuda made a lazy, waving gesture with her hand. "See, the way I see it, you owe me. Especially if you don't want Lung to find out what you're up to."

"Lung is in custody." Coil said simply.

"Not forever." She promised. "And the way I see it, you've been paying me pretty well while he's been gone. But I've been thinking you can afford to pay me more. A lot more. Because I ain't stupid. You pay me a bunch of cash to build you a tiny little bomb, so small you could drink it and never know. Your exact specifications, a bomb you can drink and not know, that can destroy a person's brain and look like some kind of massive aneurysm. Then the leader of the Empire dies suddenly of an aneurysm that NOBODY 'cept his traitor bitch ex knows he had?"

"So the way I see it, you owe me more. A lot more. Or... well, I can't be sure who I might talk to."

Coil was still and silent for a moment, and Marissa turned away to leave. Genesis's gargoyle form melted away to nothing, and the two boys joined her in exiting the room. Their job was done, and she didn't want to stand there and see how this went.

"Very well." She heard Coil say. "Fish, pay this girl what she deserves."

Marissa wasn't quite fast enough to avoid hearing the gunshot. Her eyes closed briefly and she shuddered, before continuing on.

"I'm going to visit Noelle." Krouse... Trickster, announced. "Either of you coming?" He glanced back to Marissa and Luke/Ballistic.

She hesitated. Part of her really wanted to see Noelle. But it hurt. It hurt every time she did. Every time she let herself get her hopes up that they'd have a cure, that they could fix what that formula had done to her Noelle, a dark part of her mind reminded her that the real Noelle might be gone forever. She might never come back, not even with this latest plan. It was the closest they had ever come, and it still might not be enough.

"No." She said finally. "I'm going to look in on the girls."

She passed Coil's unpowered mercenaries, walking around several construction groups who were still putting his base together, until she reached a room where Mr. Pitter, Coil's assistant and right hand man in many ways, stood. "I want to see them." She told him.

"Coil hasn't approved it." He droned back at her.

"I don't care." She shot back. "I want to see them. I need to make sure they're both okay." She had to at least pretend that she wasn't a complete monster, that she hadn't sold her soul completely in this obsessive quest to have Noelle back with them. Back with her, not that Marissa could ever work up the courage to say what that meant. Noelle was with Krouse.

After a moment of indecision, Pitter moved and let her into the room. Marissa stepped inside and smiled faintly at the first of the two figures. "Hey, Dinah." She said to the little girl on the cot. "You okay?"

The girl shrugged, staring at her. "My head hurts still. Can you ask for candy?"

Drugs. The girl wanted the drugs that Coil had her hooked on. "No, Dinah, Coil's busy. I'm sorry." Slowly, Marissa let her gaze pass toward the other occupant of the room. "What about you?"

"Me?" The remaining girl asked. "Oh I'm doing just great. Just dandy, locked up in here with fortune teller girl over there. When do I get to **do** something?"

"Coil says soon. He says you can work on Noelle as soon as he's sure how your powers work. He doesn't want you to do anything... wrong." _And of course,_ Marissa thought to herself, _once he's extracted everything he wants from us by holding your powers as leverage._

The girl shrugged. "He thinks our powers come out wrong or something. I tried telling him they work just fine. Probably better than _hers_." The last word was spoken with vehemence.

Marissa sighed, closing her eyes briefly. The things they did, the things **she** did, in her desperation to save Noelle. Even if Noelle would never understand.

_Please don't take... my sunshine... away..._

"The clones that Noelle makes do have a tendency to have... different powers than their progenitors." She pointed out mildly.

To that, the girl just gave another angry shrug. "Yeah, well I still say I could fix her better than the 'real' Panacea ever could."


	4. Arc 4: Foundation

**4.01**

"Jeeze, can you believe the slop they expect us to eat?"

Blinking up from my book at the familiar voice, I found Emma sitting across from me in the lunchroom at school. _Why the hell was Emma sitting across from me in the lunchroom at school?_

She picked a little at the mess on her tray before making a face as she pushed it disdainfully away. When she looked up, her smile was bright and infectious. "Anyway, have I got dishy stuff for you. You know Greg, that kid that never shuts up in your World Issues class with Mr. G? Well Julia says that he's got this, like, shrine thing in his locker. You know who it's a shrine for?" She leaned closer, cupping a hand to the side of her face like we were sharing a secret, though she made no attempt to lower her voice. "Taylor. He's got all these pictures and shit. It's crazy. She says we have to see it. So I was thinking, if you smiled at him—I'd do it but ew- he'd totally give you his locker combo. We could even-"

"What are you doing here?" I finally cut in, asking bluntly.

Emma paused, looking briefly confused by the question. "Uhhh duh. I just told you, figuring out how we're going to get into Greg's locker to see that shrine. It's gotta be... so fucking lame, right?"

Gazing down at the book in my hands for a moment (It was the fourth one in the Seventh Reach series that I'd been gradually borrowing from Dennis), I mouthed a few curse words before looking up again. Emma was still talking, so I interrupted again. "No, I mean here. What are you doing here? Why are you talking to me?" When she started to speak, I pointed out. "You hate me. Remember? I'm a loser, a freak, a baby, an immature little girl that needs to go back to Jr. High. Ringing any bells?"

Her eyes rolled dismissively as she waved a hand. "Seriously, Maddy, if you can't stop obsessing over whatever happened ages ago, we're never gonna see inside that locker. I mean, Sophia's gone now, so we can be friends again. Get it? I mean she's like... really... really gone."

For just a second, as I saw the look in Emma's eyes, I felt sorry for her. The news of the Travelers killing Shadow Stalker had broken the next morning. It had been all over PHO, though no one knew who had leaked it. Shadow Stalker accused of killing an innocent girl and murdered for retribution. The forum had been going crazy trying to figure out which girl they were talking about. Taylor's death, fortunately, had been several months earlier, while they were looking for deaths that were more recent.

The bad side of that was that some genius had picked up that Sophia Hess went missing around the same time. When no one ever located any more information about her, the general consensus became that Shadow Stalker had _killed_ Sophia, which was... kind of disturbingly accurate, in a way.

Anyway, it had gotten Emma a ton of attention over the last couple weeks, and allowed her to openly grieve for her best friend. She lapped it up, of course, and now she was acting as though none of it had mattered, only summoning the occasional single tear when a teacher got on her case, making them immediately back off and console her.

_Aaaaand she was still talking._ Good god, did I ever sound like that? I had to tilt my head, staring across the table at my former friend as she babbled on about plans to break into Greg's locker to see this shrine of his. I was only hearing every third word or so, as the rest became a sort of droning, buzzing noise of annoyance. Her lips kept moving, moving, moving, almost hypnotically if it hadn't been for the buzzing of her voice and the distinct impression that if I had actually been listening to what she was saying, I'd be even more disgusted than I already was.

I let my head fall back, staring at the ceiling, while she droned on. Finally, I stood from the table, tucking the borrowed book into my bag before picking it up. Then I turned and walked away.

Emma caught up a moment later. _**She was still talking!**_ I didn't want to say she was completely incapable of taking a hint, but at this rate if I hit her with a clue-by-four, she'd probably jump on that being the perfect thing to use to break into the damn locker.

I walked, Emma trailing beside me, until I came to the table where Greg and his fellow gamer buddies were sitting. All of them glanced up and then stared as the two of us approached. Some looked nervous. Not that I could blame them. In the old days, the sight of Emma, Madison, and/or Sophia approaching pretty much meant that one of them was about to be utterly humiliated.

"Greg." I spoke his name once we reached the table. The boy looked up, interrupted in mid sentence as he'd been going on about some game or another.

Beside me, Emma had fallen silent as well. She was gazing at me with a knowing smirk, just waiting to see how I was going to trick Greg into his locker combination so his obsession with Taylor could be exposed.

Instead, I said, "Emma's trying to find a way to break into your locker, to find all those... memories you're keeping. She'll probably find a way eventually, so you might wanna move them."

Greg and his friends were staring at me as I turned around and started to leave, the message passed along. It took Emma another moment to get over her surprise, before she caught up with me just as I passed from the cafeteria to the hallway. She grabbed my arm, yanking me around. It took everything I had not to break her grip, and possibly some fingers.

Her voice was furious. "What the **hell** is wrong with you?"

I stared for a second. No. No one was that stupidly oblivious. Finally, the only words I could find were, "Do you even care?"

Emma blinked, which was all the answer I needed. I turned around and started to walk away again, leaving her there. I was ten feet away when she called after me. "You're not the only one suffering, you know! I have to do community service! I lost my best friend!"

I stopped walking, looked at the floor, then turned around to look back at her. "No. Your _best friend_ lost you. Then we let her die."

Emma's face twisted into an expression I couldn't fully read, and her voice became almost shrill. "You could have stopped her just as much as I could have! You could have saved Taylor too!"

It was the one thing she had said all day that I completely agreed with. "Yeah. I know." I said quietly, before turning to walk away again.

"I'm telling you, we should go down there and kick their asses."

It was hours later, the sun had gone down, and I was out on my first _official_ Wards patrol. After two weeks of training (not to mention all the media) they thought I was ready.

Not that they let me go solo yet, of course. They had sent Vista and Gallant along with me, and within half an hour of the patrol route through the city, Gallant's girlfriend had shown up to come with us. For a lot of Wards, that might have been a problem. But Gallant's girlfriend was Glory Girl, from New Wave. So, she was probably better suited to going on this patrol than I was.

She was definitely enthusiastic, if nothing else. Now, as the four of us stood atop a roof that overlooked the parking lot of a rather upscale hotel, she was pushing the rest of us to jump down there and deal with the four guys in red, green, black, and blue power armor of some kind that we could see cornering a dozen tourists in a corner of the lot. We couldn't hear what was being said, but there was a lot of shouting and arm waving going on. The gist seemed to be that they were looking for someone, and the tourists either didn't understand or weren't cooperating.

"They're an unknown group." Gallant tersely informed his girlfriend. "Protocol says we wait for identification unless the innocents are in immediate danger. Which..."

He looked at me, and I shook my head. There were lines leading down to the group, but they were very light. "Still just very minor injury possibility."

I glanced down at my chest where the lines were to be sure. The costume that I wore now was a definite upgrade from the one I'd piecemealed together. It still awed me to even see it, let alone wear it.

The base of the costume was a form-fitting white bodysuit. On the shins and thighs of both legs were slightly raised portions of black armor. I also wore reinforced black boots that were tightly secured to the legs of my costume. Running up either leg, crossing over both the white body suit and the bits of armor was an intricate pattern of violet lines that actually glowed, creating an effect that was supposed to be reminiscent of my tethers.

The glowing lines ran past my legs, up and over my sides, and down my arms. They passed over similar armor arrangements there on my upper and forearms and down to my wrists. My hands were covered by white gloves that were actually physically attached to the rest of my costume, making it impossible for them to be ripped off. Not that it mattered, since over the thin gloves was a thicker pair of black gauntlets that attached to the forearm padding. The gauntlets were tinker-designed, and were tough enough to withstand the kind of force that my tether-accelerated punches were capable of delivering. On the inside, where my hands were, there was a section of gel-like substance in between the gauntlet and my inner glove. The gel would go from near liquid to near solid when it detected impacts, creating a protective layer between my hands and the impact so that doing so wouldn't break any bones. The boots that I was wearing had the same protective layer for my kicks.

On the back of the gauntlets there was a slightly raised portion, right around my wrist, with a flat surface that stuck out about an inch so that I could attach tethers from that section to any surface that I wanted to pull myself to (or pull to me). Also on each of the gauntlets, resting on the back of the raised portion, there was a pair of the same type of the nonlethal, knockout bolts that Sophia had used. They had been shortened slightly for my use, since all I really needed were darts, and were designed to easily pop off once my tethers exerted pressure on them. That way I could attach the end to my target and shoot it off.

My black vest had been replaced by a very similar bit of body armor, though those same glowing violet lines passed over it as well. I also had replacement bolts stored there, and on either shoulder there was a small metal ball that I was told could pass through steel without breaking given sufficient force. The balls could detach similar to the darts, should the need for a more powerful ranged blow arise.

As before, the black vest part of the armor rose into a hood. I also wore a white full face mask, though this one had lenses covering my eyes that glowed with that same faint purple light, illuminating the inside of the hood.

All in all, it was a pretty damn awesome bit of gear, and I still felt like a three year old trying on her mother's clothes whenever I put it on.

Glory Girl was still pushing to go after the unknown bad guys, while Gallant was trying to convince her to wait for a response from headquarters just in case these guys were worse than they looked. Vista was standing slightly to the side, watching the group down there intently. She glanced at me and stepped closer, lowering her voice. "If we have to go down there, we need to deal with the guy in the black armor first." She indicated one of the men. "He's the leader. Those two guys on the left don't like the one on the right very much. They won't work together without the black one."

I blinked and tilted my head. "You could tell all that from here?"

Vista shrugged at that. "I notice things."

Before I could respond to that, my lines abruptly changed color. Eyes widening, I turned to interrupt the dating pair. "Hey! Something changed. I'm seeing lots of injuries, maybe even death."

Glory Girl's reaction to that was to give a broad smile. "Finally." She exclaimed. "An excuse." With that, she leapt off the roof and flew straight down toward the group below.

"We need a-!" Gallant called after her before groaning. "... plan..."

I shrugged at him while Vista shortened the distance between the parking lot and where we stood, turning a fall of certain death into a relatively short hop.

Even as as we arrived, the battle was going full pitch. Glory Girl had slammed into the nearest of the armored men, the one in green, carrying him into the nearby fence before she began to pummel him. I saw the black armored man raise his arm that way, and a tiny rocket rose into view from the inside of the armor. I didn't need the line that rose up to indicate that she was about to be badly hurt. Before he could fire it, I attached a tether between the rocket and a streetlamp across the lot. It shot off, but my line yanked it off course, demolishing the metal pole but doing little other damage.

His head snapped around to face me, and I wagged my finger back and forth chidingly. "Now now," I told him. "The Ref calls a foul. I didn't see anyone tag you in."

His response was to raise his other hand. I dove sideways, using a tether attached from my vest to one of the cars to propel me faster, just as a laser shot through the space I had been in.

Apparently my first patrol wasn't going to end calmly after all.

**4.02**

Even as I hit the ground a safe distance from where the laser had passed, I was calling out, "Booooo, hisssss-" I made the noise of a disappointed crowd. "You're totally losing more points, dude. Attacking before the ref blows the whistle is uncool."

I could all but sense his annoyance as the man in the black armor adjusted his aim. Before he could fire again, I took a step forward, planted a line under my right foot, and then shoved off, flying fifteen feet into the air. "If you make me come down there, young man." I adopted a scolding tone. "I will take your toys away."

Two more lasers filled the air, but a quick line attached from the rear of my armored vest to to the building beyond yanked me backwards out of the way. I planted another line to keep me up for a few more seconds, calling out, "Aww, now you're just gonna hurt yourself."

Before he could fire again, I attached a line between his hand and his foot, yanking his aim down so that the laser burned into the armor of his boot. "See?"

Finally letting myself fall back toward the ground, I tightened my hand into a fist and then attached a line between my gauntlet and the face mask of the power armor, yanking myself in and adding the force from my fall to drive my gauntleted fist into the face of the power armor with enough force to send spider web cracks spreading over it, while the man himself was thrown backwards. The collision gel in the gauntlets absorbed most of the impact, and my own minor breaker abilities took care of the rest.

As the man started to rise, I heard Vista give a distinctive whistle. It was part of a system of signals we had set up. When I glanced that way, I saw her standing near a brick wall, the space between us heavily distorted. She called out, "Slip N Slide!"

Grinning, I set two lines against the man's shoulders and the other two against the high brick wall that surrounded the parking lot, before letting the lines yank him backward and up as he was pulled toward the wall.

It took longer for the man to hit than it should have, because Vista had stretched the distance out to ten times its normal distance, so what should have been a twelve foot distance felt, to him, like it was over a hundred. It also gave my tether enough time to get him up to a high enough speed that the impact blew through the brick wall entirely, obliterating it while also putting cracks in the metal of his armor.

I used a line to yank myself to a nearby part of the wall that was still standing, perching atop it above where Vista stood. "Think he'll stay down?" I asked.

She just made a disparaging noise and pointed at the man in the damaged power armor, who was already hauling himself up in the next parking lot over.

"Tinker Toys, or Mr. Potato Head?" I named another two of our predetermined plans.

Vista considered, then nodded decisively. "Mr. Potato Head."

While she got ready, I used a line to yank myself toward the man. Before he could stand, my tether-assisted blow impacted the back of his head, knocking him back toward the ground. I rolled forward over his armored form before he could rise, falling onto my back in front of him. As the man lifted his head, the cracks in his visor partially blocking his vision, he found me lying on my back in front of him, feet drawn up.

"Hello." I said simply, before the tethers attached between my boots and his shoulders lashed out. The impact launched him skidding backwards along the pavement of this second parking lot.

The man slid to a stop near Vista, who waved cheekily at him as he hauled himself up. His moves were slower by now, the systems of his suit having taken heavy damage already. But he was still a threat, and he sighted in on the younger girl with his arm laser.

To her immense credit, Vista stood her ground, most of her attention on the area above the man's head rather than on the deadly weapon being leveled at her. Already, she trusted me to do my part.

Before the man could fire, I attached a line from the man's arm to the top of the nearby tree. When the laser shot out, it flew into the air above his head before hitting the space that Vista had distorted. She had carefully reshaped that area so that the laser inverted itself, twisted around, and then burned through his opposite shoulder.

Instantly, I attached two lines on one side of that arm and two lines on the other side, all four leading down to the pavement a dozen feet away in either direction. Exerting as much force as I could on all four lines simultaneously, centered around the damage that the man's laser had done, I focused until that portion of the armor finally ripped apart. There was a scream of tearing metal as the armor around the man's arm and hand was torn away in either direction, revealing muscular, tanned skin with a heart tattoo on the bicep, and part of a black tee shirt.

Giving up on the laser, the man tried to throw a punch with the fist that was still armored. Vista, ready for that, ducked. The area of space behind her had been compressed enough that the man's punch put a hole through another part of the brick wall that, to him, had been a good ten feet away.

Before the man could free his fist, I attached more lines between his gauntlet and the wall itself. Then I just waited. His power-suit assisted strength did the rest of the work, making it so that as the man yanked backward with a determined effort to free his arm, he actually ripped the gauntlet and lower half of the armor's arm clean off, revealing his own hand there as well.

Clearly furious and beyond rational thought by that point, the man tried to grab Vista with his now unarmored hands. She twisted the space behind herself so that as she leapt backward, it actually brought her all the way around behind the man.

He whirled toward Vista once more, and she gave him another jaunty wave before starting to backpedal. As she did, I quickly attached more lines between the back of the man's armor and what remained of this portion of the wall.

The man came after my little partner, bellowing angrily through the speakers on his power armor. He charged through the space that she had compressed, crossing about four times the distance that he should have, which put him away from either of us.

I could sense his confusion as the man turned to find Vista and myself both standing about ten feet away from him, waving. Then we pointed back the way he had come. When he looked, the man saw the distorted space that made the ruined wall look much closer. At the same time, I put another tether from the man's chest to the ground in front of him.

Then Vista canceled the effect, putting the space back to normal. Instantly, my tethers, which were still attached to the wall and had only been as long as they were due to the distortion of the space, snapped back to their normal sizes. The man would have been yanked violently back to where he'd been, but the tether that I'd put at his chest held him in place. Instead, the entire back half of his armor was torn away.

With the back half gone, the front half of the man's armor fell shortly afterward, leaving a tall man with heavily muscled arms, a buzzcut, and a tiny bit of a beer gut, wearing green camo pants and that black tee shirt. He staggered, grabbing for the pistol at his hip. Before he could get it out, I extended a hand and launched one of my knock-out darts, now that the man had been stripped of his armor and any kind of medical system aboard it that might have canceled out the effects. The dart flew along a line that was attached between the tip and the wall somewhere behind the man, and hit him in bicep right under the heart tattoo, and he collapsed a moment later, his gun barely clearing its holster.

"That." I announced. "Is how you play Mr. Potato Head."

"Damn straight." Vista agreed, and her hand met my outstretched one with a slap.

Unfortunately, our celebration was interrupted as a trio of bright red lines yanked my attention that way. I created a line from where I was to the wall, yanking myself up so I could see what was happening.

Glory Girl, by that point, had finished beating on the man in the green armor, having torn bits of it off of him before leaving the guy an unconscious wreck, slightly messier than the way that Vista and I had done it, but also effective.

Apparently she had also damaged the one in the red armor enough to shatter his visor, revealing the face and neck of a dark skinned young woman, who was now unleashing a rapid-fire series of laser blasts after Glory Girl, who was forced to focus on evading.

Gallant, meanwhile, wasn't having much luck with the remaining guy in the blue armor. His emotion-altering blasts had concussive elements, but it wasn't enough to do more than annoy the guy, who was now hoisting a car with both hands. He heaved it not at Gallant, or even at Glory Girl, but toward a group of the tourist hostages.

Rather than actually getting out of the way, the people just screamed uselessly. Ignoring that, I quickly attached two lines to the car as it flipped through the air, yanking it backwards in midflight with the first tether before using the second one to arrest its momentum completely, then let it drop back onto the pavement, a few feet from where the nearest of the endangered civilians was.

A line from my gauntlet to the top of the damaged vehicle brought me to it, where I glanced over my shoulder at the group. I spread my arms in an apologetic gesture. "Sooo sorry, folks. Our valets are a bit _overly enthusiastic_ about returning your vehicles. I'll need to see a ticket stub before you can claim this one."

Vista had joined us back on this lot as well, and she took in the sight of Gallant continuing to throw useless blasts against the blue armored man, while Glory Girl remained unable to get near the red armored woman with the exposed face, whose near blindingly fast laser shots kept filling the air any time she got near. "Switch, you guys!" She blurted at the two of them.

Boyfriend and girlfriend looked at one another briefly, then each did a one-eighty. Gallant shot a blast straight into the exposed face of the woman in the damaged red armor, who immediately fell to her knees and started to cry.

Meanwhile Glory Girl flew low and fast, catching the heels of the one in the blue armor before spinning around to slam the man into the pavement hard enough to crack it. She repeated the motion twice, ripping off the laser that the man tried to point at her before using the crumpled remains of it to hammer on his visor. Once that was shattered, she gave a heave and tossed the man up and toward me. I tracked his resulting fall, firing off another dart with a line that was attached to his exposed upper chest. By the time the man hit the ground, he was unconscious.

We gathered there once the crying woman had been divested of her armor and secured. The four of us stood in a semicircle. Gallant glanced toward Vista and me. "Fourth guy?"

"Stripped of his toys." I answered.  
>"And ziptied." Vista put in, pointing back to where we had left him. Apparently she'd taken the time to ensure he wouldn't go anywhere if he, by some miracle, woke up before we got back.<p>

"Good." Gallant started. "We need to identi-"

He was interrupted by applause. The four of us whirled, finding the group of tourists and would-be hostages clapping and whistling. The attention made me blush, and I instinctively stepped back, coughing. "Uh, someone should talk to those people and find out what these guys were doing."

"I think we can handle that." A new voice interrupted, and I looked to see Miss Militia, second in command of the local Protectorate. Her voice was slightly muffled by the American-flag scarf that covered the lower half of her face, and the faux-military uniform she wore accented curves that made even my eyes want to wander. I was so, so jealous.

Arrayed behind Miss Militia were a dozen PRT officers, and slightly to her left there was a female cape that I didn't recognize. She floated a bit off the ground, and her costume consisted of emerald green, glass-like armor decorated with waves of white swirls like a particularly pretty polished stone. The armor itself was glowing brightly through some kind of inner light, and the woman also wore a matching face mask with gem-like lenses over the eyes, which were also glowing.

At a nod from Miss Militia, the PRT officers spread out to deal with the four prisoners. Then she spoke again. "We'll talk to the people here, find out what was going on. You lot should be getting your story straight for when we ask how you went from 'observe and report' to 'brawl in the middle of a parking lot full of hostages'." There was, obviously, reproach in her words, but it was tinted by what sounded like pride. I got the feeling she was angry about the risk that we'd taken, but proud that we'd managed it without letting anyone get hurt.

Vista was focused on the new woman. "Who...?"

Without looking, Miss Militia indicated with a hand before speaking dully. "May I introduce Penance, the newest member of the Protectorate East-North-East."

Glory Girl made a scoffing noise. "Please. Everyone knows she's really Pu-" Her words were cut off by Gallant covering her mouth with an armored hand and shaking his head. She sighed and shrugged.

At another direction from Miss Militia, we started to walk away, toward the vans that they had brought.

As we went, I caught sight of something out of the corner of my eye. When I glanced that way, back toward the broken wall that Vista and I had all but demolished, I saw someone standing there.

The figure was clearly feminine, her slim form outlined against the dim light. It looked like she was wearing a form-fitting black costume, with a hood that came up and covered the top half of her face, while a red half-mask covered the lower part up to her nose, leaving only the area around her eyes exposed. A few strands of brown hair emerged from the hood as well.

She was staring at us, staring at me, intently. When she noticed me looking back, she lifted her hand in a single wave.

Then her figure burst apart, turning into a swarm of bees, flies, and various other bugs before they all scattered into the night.

**4.03**

A trio of spinning fireballs slammed into the ground at Dennis's feet, hurtling the broken, smoldering body back a dozen feet before falling to the ground, little left but a few flickering flames over ruined skin.

I quirked an eyebrow. "Well. You suck."

As the loss screen appeared on the monitor in front of him, Dennis turned away to squint at me. "That guy's tournament ranked. I'd like to see you do any better."

The two of us were sitting in the back of an all-night internet and video game cafe a couple of hours after the altercation in the hotel parking lot. I'd met Dennis there once the interrogation about the fight was over, and I'd been telling him about it while he played his game, keeping my voice low. The odds of anyone overhearing, considering how late it was and how far away we were from the few other customers was astronomical, but still.

"The difference there is I've never played this game." I pointed out, quite reasonably, I thought. "You're supposed to be good at it." I was teasing, clearly. My video game experience was limited to watching Dennis and the other boys at the Wards HQ, or here.

Unfortunately for me, Dennis was well aware of my inexperience. He gave me a sidelong look. "You do realize that if you tried this, you'd probably manage to accidentally find some control combination that made your character spontaneously combust before your opponent could move?"

"Ayup." I agreed. "Which I would totally count as a win, because technically they wouldn't have killed me."

We both snickered a little, before he changed the subject. "So this mysterious bug figure you saw, no one else noticed her?"

I shook my head. "She was gone by the time anyone else looked."

"Well congratulations." Dennis winked. "You've either got a stalker, a potential sidekick, or an archenemy."

"It could have been a coincidence that she was standing there staring at me and disappeared after I noticed." I put in rather lamely. This received the exact look it deserved before I sighed. "Yeah, I don't believe it either."

"Check the database for anyone with bug related powers next chance you get." He suggested. "Look for anyone that matches. Even if they're from out of state. You never know."

I nodded, thinking back to the blank look I'd gotten from Miss Militia when I'd mentioned it. She promised to make a couple inquiries, but it wouldn't hurt for me to take a look as well..

By that point, a pretty blonde girl had come into the cafe and walked back to take a seat a few cubicles down, so we stopped talking about 'work stuff' and switched back to focusing on the game.

For a moment, I just watched Dennis cycle through the various characters he had available. Then I lifted a hand to point. "Try using that one with the pink and white armor. She's cute."

Coughing at this, Dennis turned a disbelieving gaze to me. "You realize this is a war for the fate of the multiverse, right?"

"Uh huh..." I let my head tilt innocently. "So?"

"So," he informed me. "There is not a single competent military tactician in the **entire** history of warfare that has ever, ever based a winning battle strategy around _'let's use her, she's cute'_."

"Well maybe that's why war takes so long." I sniffed. "Nobody's doing it right."

Sadly, that was not enough to convince him of my sound strategic mind, and he went with a different character. I watched him play for another twenty minutes, injecting my own rather useless ideas occasionally.

Then it was time for Dennis to head out so that he could do his own patrol route. As he signed out of the computer, the red-headed Ward glanced to me, lowering his voice to barely above a whisper. "If you see you-know-who again tonight, call it in. Don't worry about someone thinking you're paranoid or whatever, call it in."

I promised I would, and then he headed out while I took a trip to the restroom. When I came out, my attention was on my phone, thumbs starting to type out a text to let Dean know that I was going to stop by the Wards HQ and use the database to look for the bug girl.

I was heading toward the door when a voice spoke up. "He's wrong, you know."

Glancing up at the voice, unsure if she was talking to me, I found the older, pretty girl looking toward me. "About her." She nodded toward the screen, and I saw the pink and white armored character that I'd tried to push on Dennis earlier. "That group he was using, she would have filled a speed/magic hole he was missing."

I blinked once, then again. "A... Oh. I really just watch the flashy swords and magic and stuff." Shrugging a little self consciously. "Me no game videos much good."

The girl hesitated then, like she wasn't sure she should have spoken up. "Sorry, I thought you might be trying to decide what set-up to use for your own group." There was another pause, before she awkwardly asked, "You umm, you still wanna see what she can do?" Her nod indicated the character on the screen once more. "Just in case you decide to play with your boyfriend."

"He's not my boyfriend." I said quickly, automatically. Then I paused. He wasn't, really. We hung out together, he loaned me books and we talked a lot. I liked watching him play games even if I didn't play them. But we'd never actually said anything about... that.

The blonde girl just glanced at me when I said that, looking thoughtful for a moment before pushing a chair out. "I'm Marissa." I was guessing that she was about three years older than I was.

"Madison." I took the offered seat, because why not? It wasn't like many people outside of the Wards ever talked to me anyway. It might do me good to talk to someone who was completely apart from this whole cape business.

Marissa selected the character and started to run through the battle, stopping once in awhile to let me know what she was doing or why something was happening. Even with the distractions, I could tell that she was really good at the game.

"You've played this a lot?" I asked, once a lull came.

There was a moment of quiet before the older girl answered. "Yeah, it's pretty similar to a game I used to play..." She trailed off. "... Awhile ago."

I watched her face, seeing the frown there. "Is something wrong?"

Marissa looked surprised that I'd noticed, glancing at me before flinching. "Don't worry about it. It's just been a long time since I've been home."

"You... can't go back?" I asked hesitantly, unsure when I saw the look on her face.

"It's not that simple." Marissa's voice was soft, and I wasn't even sure that she knew she'd spoken aloud. "I wish it was."

For a moment, she looked sad... and lonely. I swallowed, staring at that look on her face. I closed my eyes, thinking back to the look that had been on Taylor's face for so long. This wasn't the exact same expression, but still... "Are you being.. threatened?" I finally asked.

Her eyes widened and she looked at me. "What?"

"Sorry. I'm sorry." My head shook. "I know it's none of my business. It's stupid, I just... I was wondering if someone was hurting you or something."

"No." Marissa shook her head, but that lonely look remained. "No one's hurting me or anything. It's just... It's just complicated." Her eyes found mine. "Why did you think it was that?"

Flinching, I went quiet for a moment. The two of us stared at each other for a moment, and then I couldn't help it. A snort escaped me, turning into a tiny giggle. When the other girl raised both eyebrows questioningly, I shrugged. "I was just wondering if either of us are ever going to say anything that doesn't make the other one really uncomfortable. It's gotta be some kind of record."

That made the other girl blink, before she gave a little giggle as well. Then she looked surprised. I had the feeling she hadn't had much of a reason to smile in a long time. That was too bad, because she had a nice smile.

"I was a bully." I blurted, making the older girl blink at me. I flushed, but pressed on. "I was a bitch. I was... a horrible, horrible person. I helped make this other girl's life... completely miserable. I ruined her life for over a year, just because it made me feel special. Just because... making her life hell made me feel like I was better, and the worse she felt, the better it made me think I was. And then... and then she died."

Marissa was staring at me, and the look made me flinch, turning my gaze away to the floor. "I... I've been trying to change." I said quietly. "I've been trying to do better, be a better person."

Still staring at the floor, I mumbled, "That's why I was asking if someone was hurting you, because... you sort of looked like Taylor, back when we were hurting her. And, I know it was none of my business, but I let Taylor die because I didn't stop what happened. I didn't... want anything like that to happen again, just because I didn't say something." I flushed a little more, sighing. "And now you know I'm the world's biggest cunt."

I started to rise, wanting to get out of there after embarrassing myself so much, but her hand found my arm and stopped me. "Hey, not true. I've known much bigger cunts." When I looked up doubtfully at that, Marissa offered a weak little smile. "Trust me. Besides, you said you're trying to be better." She paused before asking, "Is it working?"

Thinking about it, I slowly nodded. "I think so. I'm just not sure if it'll ever be enough. I keep dreaming about her, seeing her face, almost every other night." The next admission was harder to make. "But it's the other half that makes me worry. The half where I don't see her face."

Marissa considered that, before speaking quietly. "Because you're afraid that you'll forget why you wanted to change."

Her understanding made me stare briefly, before I managed a nod. "I—yeah. Yeah. I'm afraid that if I stop dreaming about her every night, stop remembering what I did, even for a moment, I'll... I'll go back to the way I was."

"Nobody can live with that kind of pressure, Madison." Marissa told me. "Take it from someone who knows, you'll burn out if you don't ease up a little on yourself. It doesn't mean you'll forget why you changed. But if all you do is torture yourself every time you close your eyes, it's not going to help."

Her eyes rolled then. "Yeah, listen to all that good advice I can give that I'll never listen to. Like I can stop seeing her every time I go to sleep."

"Her?" I asked, picking up on that.

She winced, hesitating before giving a faint nod. "My... best friend. She's been..." That look of intense loss came across Marissa's face then. "... changing."

Silence came then, and we sat for a minute before I hesitantly asked, "Changing?"

I saw the other girl swallow hard. "Yeah. Noelle, she's just... she's different now. She's been going down a bad path, becoming something that... I'm not sure if I want to be near. But it's not her fault. It's really not, it's not something she—it wasn't her choice."

I wasn't sure what all that meant, drugs maybe? But I offered, "Does she know she has a problem?"

Again, that lost look came that made me instinctively want to find the person that made her look so sad and use the high C trick on them. "She knows. But she can't stop it either. It's out of our control. We've been trying to fix it, trying to help her, but I'm afraid..."

She trailed off once again, looking like she was afraid that if she put voice to what she'd been about to say, it would be true. Finally, speaking so softly I had to strain to hear, the girl finished her sentence. "I'm afraid it's too late. I'm afraid she'll never be our Noelle again."

I hesitated, then poked her in the side. She looked up at me, and I pointed out, "You said nobody can take that kind of pressure all the time. Last time I checked, you aren't nobody."

"That could be my last name." She replied mildly. "Marissa Nobody."

"No." I shook my head. "You're too pretty to be a Nobody."

For someone who looked like she did, Marissa still looked surprised to hear it. I had the feeling that it had been a long time since someone had told her that. "I umm, thanks..." She said rather awkwardly, like she wasn't sure how to respond to it.

I coughed, shaking my head. "I was just saying, your friend... Noelle, you know that... all you can do is help as much as she'll let you. All you can do is... be there. And... it might be that the best thing you could do for her is... let her go."

She looked stricken at that, and I flinched. "I'm sorry. I mean, I don't know anything about your situation. I don't know-"

"No." Marissa sighed. "No, I know what you're saying. I know. But... if there's still a chance, still any way to help her, to get her back to the way she was..."

"And if you can't, if she's too far gone, that's not your fault." I said. "All you can do is try."

"When do I stop trying?" Marissa asked. "When have I gone too far? Where's the line between doing too much to help her, and not doing enough?"

The question made me think, while the older girl met my gaze searchingly, as though hoping I actually had an answer. Finally, all I could offer was, "I don't think there's a real answer to that. It's... it's your choice. It's your decision. You have to ask yourself how far is too far. You have to decide where **your** line is, because nobody else can do it for you and have it mean anything. But don't let Noelle or me or anybody keep moving your line. Decide where your line stands, and stay there."

"What if that means I lose her?" Marissa's voice was soft, almost too quiet to hear.

"Then at least you won't lose yourself too." I responded, just as quietly.

For a moment, the two of us sat there, staring at each other. It looked like she really wanted to say something, but before she could, there was a buzz from the purple cell phone on the table. She picked it up and glanced at the message she'd received. From the look on her face, I was guessing that it wasn't good news. She rose, logging out of the game she'd been playing. "I've gotta go. I... there's something I have to help with. They're waiting for me."

"Bye Marissa." I lifted a hand to wave, feeling emotionally drained.

"Mars." She replied. "My—umm... My friends call me Mars. I don't have a lot of them now but... you should."

"Okay... Mars." I smiled faintly. "I'll remember it if I ever see you again."

Looking briefly uncertain, Mars finally grabbed a bit of discarded printer paper and used a nearby pen to scribble down a number. "Call me if you want to talk again, or... maybe even do something that isn't so heavy." She offered with another of those pretty smiles.

Then she was gone, and I sat there in the almost empty internet cafe, wondering what this feeling was.

**4.04**

"Oh god, I'm so sorry to hear that, Alan." I heard the sound of my dad's voice as he came in the back door. It was a week after I'd met Marissa, a Saturday, and he had been visiting his office to pick up some papers he needed.

I looked up from the kitchen table where I'd been eating a plate of toast with peanut butter and honey, licking my fingers clean while watching my father on his cell phone. He glanced my way and then closed the door with his foot. "Hold on, I don't think so, but I'll ask her." Taking the phone away from his ear, he focused on me. "Mads, have you seen Emma in the last few days?"

That made me blink. "Umm..." I thought back. I'd been deliberately avoiding her ever since that incident in the cafeteria, but now that he said something, I really hadn't seen her. "She hasn't been in class this week. I didn't really pay attention, because..." I trailed off and gestured.

Dad nodded and went back to his phone call. "Sorry, Alan, Madison hasn't seen her either. When... Oh. So you've talked to the police?"

He had all of my attention now. Pushing the half finished plate away, I stared while my father finished his phone call, promising to let Emma's dad know if any of us saw her.

Once he disconnected, I spoke up. "Emma's missing?"

Dad nodded, sighing heavily. "Apparently she's been missing since last Friday, but Tuesday was the first time anyone knew for sure because she was supposed to be camping with friends for the long weekend. But they got back Tuesday and said that Emma told them she couldn't go. They contacted the police, but now he's desperate enough to try all of Emma's old friends. Even though he knows... well, that you two aren't talking."

"Emma's been missing for a week..." I said slowly, letting that sink in as I sat back rather heavily in my seat. "And she lied about where she was going?"

My father leaned against the counter, his own face lined with worry. "I'm afraid Alan's... not taking it well. The police have no ideas, and he's afraid they're not taking it seriously."

That made me stare. "What? Why wouldn't they take it seriously?"

He sighed at that. "Because in their eyes, she's a runaway. Emma's a troubled girl that's already doing community service for what happened with Taylor and Sophia. Her former best friend died, partly because of her, and then her new best friend died. She lied about where she was going and then disappeared. The police think she just took off."

I winced. When he put it like that, it did sound plausible. This meant that Emma had been missing since the night I'd had the fight with the others against the armored guys. "I'll, umm, I'll ask if any of the others have any ideas for finding her." I promised.

Smiling faintly, my father nodded. "Thank you, sweetie. I know you two don't get along, but-"

"But she's still a person." I said firmly, gathering my plate and glass before standing up. "She doesn't deserve to be ignored when she's in trouble just because I don't like her."

Pushing off the counter, Dad pulled me into a hug once my dishes were in the sink, holding me tight for a moment before he released me. "You heading to the cemetery?"

I nodded. It was time for my two hours of community service for the week. "That's why I'm wearing my grungies." I gestured down at my clothes.

Dad raised an eyebrow. "I was not aware that pink overalls with glitter sparkles were considered grungy."

Sticking my tongue out at him, I retorted, "They're the closest to grungy that I have after the black ones ripped on that tree. Besides, I was referring to the boots and an ugly flannel shirt."

"Hey, that's my flannel shirt." Dad protested. "What do you mean, ugly?"

"Oh please." I rolled my eyes. "Like it's so surprising to you. Oooh news flash, Dad has no sense of style. Alert the presses."

Rolling his head back and around to crack his neck, Dad oh-so-casually asked, "You know what I do have a sense of?" His voice was tinted with warning that made me take a step back, but he grabbed my arm before I could move. The next thing I knew, my father had me yanked into a hold that pinned my arms to my sides while he attacked my stomach and sides with his free hand, tickling me while I squealed and struggled.

Of course I could have broken his grip using what I was learning from Vista and the others, let alone with my powers. But I didn't. This wasn't about winning, it was about being with my dad.

"So the cops think she ran away?" Dennis was asking while his shovel hit the dirt.

"Of course they do." Carlos replied for me, taking a moment to wipe off his brow. The three of us were digging holes for fence posts for the cemetery expansion, and it was sweaty, dirty work. "She was in trouble, she lost her friends, I'd think she ran away too."

Both of the boys looked at me, and I sighed. "I know, it makes sense. But something about it feels wrong. I can't explain it. I think she's in trouble now, even if she meant to run away at first."

Dennis hesitated before asking, "Is this your power, the danger sense?"

"I'm not sure." I had to admit. "It just... it feels like she's in danger."

"Who's in danger?" Chris, dragging the next fence post back toward us, sounded eager. "Do we have to go fight someone? Please, please tell me we have to go fight someone." He and Dennis positioned the post into the hole and held it steady.

I shrugged apologetically. "Sorry, Chris, no fight yet. It's just that Emma's missing." I explained while helping Carlos fill the hole.

"Maybe she's the bug girl that was following you around the other night." Chris pointed out once I was done.

Giving him a look, I shook my head. "She had brown hair, not red. And she wasn't following me around, I only saw her once. At least, I think I saw her. Hell, for all I know, I imagined it." I hesitated before adding, "Besides, if Emma Barnes manifested the power to turn into bugs, we'd still be hearing the screaming."

"I take it you haven't had any luck identifying bug girl?" Carlos grunted while emptying his shovel into the hole to start burying the post.

"Nope." I sighed. "Like I said, maybe I didn't really see her at all."

"I dunno." Dennis pointed out. "There's a lot of new faces in town since the Empire went down."

He was right, there had been a sudden influx of parahumans, mostly villains, trying to fill the void left by the fall of Empire Eighty Eight. Luckily for us, most of them were cheap knockoffs like the quartet of power armored wannabes we'd run into the other night. So far, the truly nasty bad guys hadn't made an appearance.

"No bug girls though." I said. "Not even on the heroes side."

"Well yeah." Chris shrugged. "The only new hero besides Purity is that Defiant guy."

"Defiant?" I glanced to him.

Nodding, Chris took a moment to find something on his phone before holding it up. "New tinker hero. Armsmaster's been trying to track him down to see if he wants to work on something, but so far the guy's been avoiding company."

I looked at the picture he was showing me. This 'Defiant' looked like a well built man in white metallic armor with a gold cross on the front. The top of the cross came up to cover the face-mask of his knight-style helmet. One of his arms was extended toward a figure in the corner of the picture that looked like one of the Merchants gang members, and some kind of golden blade of energy that looked a bit like a flat lightsaber was extending from his wrist.

Whistling, I acknowledged, "Well he definitely looks impressive. But yeah, not a bug girl."

Shrugging, Chris put his phone away. "Sorry. Maybe she's just really shy."

"Yeah..." I made a face. "Or maybe I'm going crazy."

"Well, crazy girl." Dennis winked at me. "Think you could head back and fill up the water bottles?" He gestured with his own empty bottle after plucking it off the ground.

"Oh now the girl has to get the water, huh?" I teased.

"Well if you'd rather," He offered. "I could do it and you could dig the next post hole."

I took the offered bottle, as well as the others. "Point taken."

Bottles in my arms, I walked back the way we had come. There was a drinking fountain near the main building that I could use.

On the way, I stopped at a gravestone in an out of the way corner of the cemetery. My throat closed up a little as I stared down at the name.

"Hey, Taylor." I said softly, taking a knee for a moment and setting the bottles down. "It's me again." As I knelt there, I put a hand out and let my fingers brush along the name and dates engraved on the marker. When I touched the date of her death, a shudder ran through me and my eyes closed to fight back the dampness that arose.

My voice failed me for a moment, as it always did when I visited her grave. When I finally spoke, it was weak. "Emma's missing. I'm not sure what happened to her. I... I don't know how I know, but she's in trouble. Whatever happened, I have to find her."

"I... I'm not sure how you'd feel about it. For all the time I spent making fun of you, I didn't know you very well. I... wish I did. I wish I knew what would make you happy. I wish I knew... anything." My eyes closed again and I hung my head, letting my hand fall away from the stone. "But I'm pretty sure that even with everything Emma did, everything **we** did, you'd still help her if she was in trouble like this."

I stayed there like that for another minute or so, not wanting to make the boys wait much longer for their water. Then I pulled myself up, collected the bottles, and was starting to leave when a voice spoke from behind me. "You visit her often?"

Whirling in surprise, I stared at the man that I saw there. "I-" My face blanched. "Mr. Hebert." Taylor's father. He looked... old. He looked weary and like a stiff breeze would knock him over. His eyes were bloodshot, and from the tight grip that he was maintaining on the dark bottle in his hand, I could guess what the strong smell was. My throat closed up entirely as I stared at the man.

I had... no idea what to say. Nothing at all. I couldn't even tell the man why Taylor had died, why his daughter was gone, because it wasn't allowed. I couldn't tell him I was sorry, because he couldn't know that I had been involved. It was part of the secrecy agreement. No one, not even Danny Hebert, was allowed to know that Shadow Stalker had been Sophia, and that Sophia had been responsible for Taylor's death. All they'd told him, apparently, was that her death was an 'unfortunate accident in the course of an ongoing struggle against a disturbed individual, who remained classified'.

Apparently he hadn't taken any of it very well, judging from what I could see. His clothes had clearly been worn for several days, he hadn't shaved in at least a week, and the alcohol smell was now strong enough to make me flinch.

"I come here a lot." Mr. Hebert finally said, once it was clear I wasn't going to speak. "Sometimes I just sit in the car, over there." He gestured vaguely at the road nearby. "I see you here a lot too. Were you... a friend?"

I flinched at the hope in his voice. He desperately wanted me to be one of Taylor's friends. He wanted to know she was remembered by people who cared about her.

What could I say? I couldn't tell him the whole truth. But could I lie to him? Would telling him a little bit of the truth be better than a bigger lie? What was the right thing to do? What was the right thing to say?

"I..." I started before cringing and looking away. My eyes found the gravestone, and I stared for another moment before speaking again. "I'm sorry, Mr. Hebert. I wasn't Taylor's friend." About this, I couldn't lie. No matter how much easier it would make things. "I... I wish I had been. She was... she was better than me."

I started to speak again, but when I glanced at the man, I saw that his eyes were closed. His hand with the beer bottle hung loose at his side, the bottle dropping from limp fingers while his other hand came out toward the gravestone. He wasn't touching it, just... reaching toward it, as though trying to grasp something that wasn't there. Then his shoulders started to shake, and I saw the tears falling.

Blinded by the dampness in my own eyes, I turned away and walked on. When I glanced back a few moments later, I saw the man kneeling there in between the two graves. He had a hand on each of the gravestones, his head bowed.

I forced myself to turn away and keep walking, while behind me, a broken man knelt between the graves of his wife and daughter, his tears mixing with the dirt that held everything he had ever cared for.

**4.05**

It was getting dark by the time I left the Wards HQ later, after trying for hours to both find something more about this bug girl I'd seen, and stop thinking about seeing Mr. Hebert at the cemetery earlier. Both efforts were unsuccessful, and I was trudging out onto the sidewalk for a walk to the bus stop. At least I'd had the presence of mind to shower and change clothes before spending all afternoon at the computer.

As I walked, a buzzing in my pocket made me jump a little, before I settled and took the phone out. A glance at the screen made me raise an eyebrow before I answered it. "Mars?" I had called her earlier in the week to give her my number, but she hadn't been able to talk. I'd had the feeling that something bad had been happening.

"Madison?" Her voice came through, and it sounded a little shaky. "Sorry, I ummm, I'm not sure what I'm doing. I just..." A long sigh came over the line. "I really need to get out of here. Are you busy?"

I hesitated briefly. Part of me just wanted to go home and veg after a long day, but something in the older girl's voice sounded like she really needed someone to talk to. "I'm not busy." I finally decided. "I was just heading for the bus."

"Where are you?" She asked then. "I'll pick you up."

Again I hesitated before shrugging off my doubt. That was just the part of me that wanted to dwell, that didn't think I deserved any release or happiness after the wreck that Taylor's father had been. "I'm downtown." I gave her the address, and she promised to be around in fifteen minutes if I'd meet her in front of the little park that was a couple blocks away.

Walking there, I considered for the five hundredth time that day what might have happened to Emma. **Was** she the bug girl somehow? Different colored hair wasn't _total_ proof otherwise, especially if something had made her trigger. After all, she'd disappeared on the same night that I'd seen bug girl. Obviously it could be a coincidence, but what if it wasn't?

There wasn't much time to debate on the subject once I reached the park. I'd barely had time to take a seat on the bench next to the entrance when one of those classic muscle cars from the sixties or seventies that guys are always going gaga over pulled up to the curb. It was dark red, almost black, and the windows had been tinted heavily.

The window rolled down, and I saw Marissa. She looked tired, but smiled when she looked at me, and I immediately knew that I'd made the right choice in agreeing to go out for awhile. At her beckoning wave, I stood up and made my way over to stand next to the car.

"Nice ride." I commented while looking the vehicle up and down. I may not know much about the particulars of cars, but I knew what looked pretty, and this looked pretty.

That smile came back, and I actually saw teeth this time. "Thanks." Marissa gestured. "Come around and get in. Unless you want to drive." That was accompanied by a wink.

"Err. Maybe once I get my license." I replied mildly before heading around the car to get in the other side. The door stuck a little bit, but the seat was comfortable and I sank into it with a sigh of appreciation.

"That reminds me." Marissa pulled away from the curb as soon as it was clear. "I never got to ask back at the cafe. How old are you? I mean, just so I don't go doing stupid stuff like offering to let you drive." She gave a self-depreciating roll of her eyes. "For example."

"I'll be sixteen in a week and a half." I replied, pulling my seat-belt on as we pulled around a bus.

"Week and a half, huh?" She eyed me briefly. "Well happy early sixteenth. Are you doing anything special?"

I shrugged. "I'm not sure. I haven't really been paying attention." It was true, the last few weeks had gone by so quickly that I'd pretty much forgotten my birthday was approaching until she'd asked.

That earned me a strange look. "Most girls can't wait for their sweet sixteens."

Swallowing, I glanced out the window. "I've had a lot on my mind."

"Right." She hesitated before nodding. "The other girl. I'm sorry." There was a pause before she glanced at me when we stopped at a red light. "Still, you deserve a good birthday. Everyone does."

"What about you?" I asked after a moment. "How old are you, I mean?"

Marissa paused, biting her lower lip before she answered. "I turned nineteen about a month ago." She went quiet then, and looked introspective. For a moment, that lonely, sad look came before she banished it with a shake of her head. "Not gonna think about that now. It's time for a fun night, all serious topics banned."

"All serious topics banned, huh?" I echoed her words, finding a small smile.

"Yup." She gave me a serious look. "That means no dwelling. For either of us." Her voice turned to that of a classic gangster. "Or I mights gotta toss you outta this here car, capiche?"

Feeling a little bit of a smile tugging at me, I managed to sound mostly serious. "You'd throw me out of the car for breaking your 'no serious subjects' rule?"

She gazed back at me, her voice mockingly serious. "I have impulse control problems."

For a moment, we both held that serious look, before breaking into giggles. The laughter just compounded a second later as the guy behind us leaned on his horn because the light had been green for all of six tenths of a second without us moving. As one, we nodded over our shoulders at the guy in the van and spoke together. "Impulse control problems."

Still giggling, Mars pulled away from the light. "Yeah, yeah, I'm going." She snickered a little still before glancing to me. "So I wanna do something fun. I was thinking of a movie, but I'm open to suggestions."

While a movie sounded nice, I kind of wanted to talk to Marissa rather than sit quietly. I liked talking to her, even if we did tend to fall into heavy subjects. An idea came then. "I think I know the place. Hang a right up here."

A few minutes later, we pulled into a lot, and the older girl looked at the sign, then turned to me with a raised eyebrow. "Bowling?"

"Hey, bowling's fun, Mars." I pointed out a little defensively while opening the door.

"I'll take your word for it." She replied while chuckling a little as she got out the other side.

We started to walk in while I asked, a little incredulously, "Are you saying you've really never bowled before?"

"Not once." Marissa confirmed automatically before pausing. A slightly worried look crossed her face. "Is that really weird?"

"No, no." I shook my head to reassure her. "Probably not. I just used to go with my dad when I was little. He had a bowling league once a week. I watched and ate nachos. Plus it was an excuse to stay up a little bit later than my normal bedtime in the middle of the week, especially when the games ran long."

We got inside, and I helped Marissa get shoes and a ball. She made a bit of a face at using rented shoes, but managed it without fussing too much.

"Now it's time for the most important part of bowling." I informed the other girl solemnly.

"Figuring out how to roll the ball?" She asked, eying the pins at the end of the lane doubtfully.

"Pfft." I waved a hand dismissively and stood. "Nachos."

Both of her eyebrows went up at that. "The most important part of bowling... is nachos?"

"Now you're getting it." I winked and started up to the counter, while Marissa followed, chuckling.

We split the largest nachos they had, with as much cheese as they could squeeze onto them, along with a couple of sodas and a crapload of napkins. Back at the lane, I set the nachos down and moved to pick up a ball. "I'll go first, just watch what I do."

"I'm all eyes." Mars replied agreeably, tucking her feet up on the seat next to her as she watched.

I took my shot, managing to take down seven of the pins, while my second attempt put down two more. "One left." I noted, before dropping to the floor to do a single pushup.

"Uhh..." Marissa leaned almost all the way over to look me in the eye. "What're you doing? Is that really part of the rules, or are you messing with me?"

Blushing a little, I came back to my feet. "Sorry, you don't have to. It's just part of a tradition my dad started with his league. For every pin they left up, they had to do a pushup. Since I grew up watching that, it's kind of... engrained."

Rising from her own seat, Mars shrugged. "Well if you're doing it, I'll do it too."

Two rolls later, her tone changed as she stared at the pins at the end of the lane. "Okay, I am not doing nine pushups. Seriously? Are you sure this floor is level?"

Snickering, I waved a hand. "First throw, at least you knocked one down. And ahh, how about a max of five?" Wagging a finger, I pointed out. "After all, you did promise me pushups."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." Marissa retorted, but she was chuckling at herself. Grunting, she pushed herself down, eying me the whole time she was doing them. "I bet you're just loving this. Shyster. Get me in here all, 'oh my dad and I do pushups all the time when we miss one or two pins, you should totally try that too'."

I grabbed a chip, dragging it through the cheese while drawling, "As I recall, participating in that part was completely your idea."

"That's your continuity." She shot back. "I prefer Marsinuity."

"Marsinuity..." I raised an eyebrow, chewing on the chip thoughtfully. "Is that where you say anything you want happened, regardless of the facts?"

"Yup!" The blonde girl chirped cheerfully, and then heaved herself up. "Okay, your turn. And you better miss like, all ten. I wanna see you do that many."

"Didn't we agree on a max of five?" I questioned while passing the nachos for her to try.

"That was for me." Mars replied rather primly. "I'm sweet and innocent and I totally suck at this game."

I let my head tilt. "You know, I'm pretty sure only one of those statements is true."

She reached out to grab a nacho, almost losing the cheese before managing to cram it whole into her mouth. "Mmmphh mmmm, oh yum. My mom never let me eat like this." Her hand snagged a second one and she all but purred with satisfaction. It was _adorable_ and I felt that same... tug that I'd felt the other night after meeting her.

Her eyes met mine after a moment, and she nodded over her shoulder, making me realize that I'd been staring. "So... you ready to forfeit to my incredible skill yet?"

I pretended to consider before rising to go to my ball. "I think I'll struggle on through."

"It was worth a shot."

"I dunno, your shots tend to end with you doing a bunch of exercise."

"_Oooouch."_

By the time we left the bowling alley later, I was pretending to count on my fingers. "Okay, by my estimation, if you bowled once a week for the next month you'd... be in good enough shape to join the PRT."

Marissa laughed out loud. "Yeah, sure, me in the PRT. That's great." Shaking her head with amusement, she looked at me. "Besides, I'm already in shape."

"That's true." I agreed. "You look really good." As soon as I said it, I felt a blush jump to my face. "I mean ummm..." Glancing up, I found her smiling at me, which just made the blush worse.

Before either of us could speak again, her phone went off. A sigh escaped Mars as she looked at it. "I... have to go." She said reluctantly. "I'm really sorry, but I can't blow this off. Can I drop you somewhere?"

I shrugged. "Nah, do what you gotta do. I'll take the bus."

"Thanks, Madison." She told me with a smile. "I had fun tonight."

"Me too." I replied truthfully. I really had. "And if you're Mars, then you can call me Mads."

"Mads..." Marissa hesitated, then stepped over and embraced me. Her hug felt nice, and I closed my eyes to enjoy it.

When she broke the hug, Mars looked as reluctant to do so as I had been. "I'll call you." She promised. "I just have to... help take care of some stuff."

I nodded, swallowing back the irrational urge to ask her to stay. I didn't want to put her in that position, no matter how much I'd wanted the night to keep going. "If you don't, I will."

That smile that I liked came back, before she moved to get in her car. While she drove away, I just stood there, staring after the departing vehicle with a smile of my own that was probably a lot more goofy than hers.

I was still smiling when the first rolling boom passed over me, reminding me of thunder. Before I realized what it was, a nearer explosion blew apart a doctor's office a block away. And then all I could hear was screaming and sirens.

**Interlude 4 – Bug Girl**

The man was a Merchant thug. Not one with powers, just a lowlife with no further aspirations than his next high, and a life that revolved around hurting anyone he had to in order to get it.

She knew the type. She knew them all too well. They had been a plague on the city for entirely too long. Before, she had been forced to put up with them, forced to let them continue.

Not now. No more. The girl in the red mask that covered the lower half of her face stood atop the roof of a hardware store, watching the man as he shoved a woman against a dumpster in the alley. The knife held tightly in his right hand glinted in the dim light from the nearby street as he held it up to the woman's throat, demanding every bit of money that she had on her.

The girl leapt from the roof, falling through the air. As the ground rushed up toward her, she shifted her body into a mass of cockroaches, flies, wasps, and spiders. The swarm that had been the girl hit the ground, the flying insects working to slow the fall of the others so that they remained more or less in a single mass.

As the gathered swarm rose up behind the thug, his chosen victim noticed. Where before she had simply been quietly pleading with the man not to hurt her, now she screamed.

Twisting around to see what she had noticed, the thug's eyes went wide and he shoved the woman toward the swarm while backpedaling. The victim's scream turned piercing as she was sent through the writhing mass of bugs, only to come out on the other side none the worse for wear.

While the man backed up, muttering impotent threats, the swarm floated on after him. As it moved, the mass of bugs gradually reshaped itself into the vaguely humanoid form. Then each of the tiny creatures shaped and formed, attaching itself to its neighbor and adjusting, flickering in color and shape until a single form stood once more. The girl in the red face mask.

All the while, the man stood and stared, his mouth hanging open. Then he heard the swarm that had become a girl speak. "Scum."

He turned and ran. His rushing, panicked footsteps pounded down the alley for ten long seconds until he reached the dead end that the conscious part of him had already known about, but which his terrified subconscious had ignored.

The man whirled, looking for another escape, but it was too late. The moment he turned, the girl's hand found his throat. As soon as the vice-like grip caught him, he was brought to his knees.

For a moment, he struggled, tearing at the single arm that held him with an effort that was as desperate as it was useless. He clutched and cursed, the nails of his grubby fingers digging into the arm of her costume to no effect.

"N-no..." The man managed to hiss past the fingers that were digging into his throat. "Won't... hurt anybody... anymore. Be good... get a job... do right. Lemme go. Don't wanna die."

The whole time, the girl stood and held him there. With a little more pressure, she could have torn his throat all of the way out, but she held off. Instead, her eyes took in his pathetic, quivering, babbling form, and she smiled faintly. Then she leaned in and spoke softly. "Say please."

"Please." Immediately, the thug latched onto the word like a life preserver. "Please, god, please let me go. Please don't hurt me like Ralph, I ain't as bad as him, I ain't. He killed that kid, I ain't never killed nobody. I'll do better, I will. You ain't gotta hurt me. You ain't gotta kill me."

"I don't." The girl agreed. "I don't have to kill you."

Sighing in relief, the man dared to look up at her. "Thank you. Oh god and Jesus, thank you."

Her eyes met his, and he saw madness there as she responded. "I want to." When his mouth opened to question that, she continued. "I want to take your life. I will use it better than you."

His mouth opened to speak again, to scream, to beg, but his last words were meaningless. The girl's form began to dissolve while moving to engulf him. The man's screams echoed off the walls of the nearby buildings, while his blood began to run into the nearby gutter.

She entered the abandoned apartment through a broken window, moving as silently as a light breeze. A white grocery bag was held loosely in one hand. As her feet found the creaky, dust covered floor, the girl strode forward to the nearby door with a poster of some band on it that had been left behind by the previous tenants.

It wasn't locked. She didn't need to lock it. The girl pushed the door open and stood in the doorway for a moment, watching her treasures.

The first treasure looked up, red hair partially illuminated by the dim light that came through the partially boarded up window nearby. Her face was much less pretty than it had been a week earlier, from the tears and dirt as well as the bruises and dried blood that had resulted from her attempts to flee.

"We need food." Emma Barnes told her abductor. "Please. We have to eat." She nodded to the sleeping form next to her on the floor. "She's going to get sick if she doesn't eat. We both are."

"Food." The girl said, throwing the grocery bag to the floor in front of the girl.

Emma took the bag and rooted through it before coming out with a package of Balogna. As hungry as she was, the formerly spoiled girl didn't even hesitate to rip the package open. Her dirty fingers, nails broken to stubs, ripped several pieces out at once before she tore into the meat voraciously. At the same time, her other hand rooted through the bag, finding a package of cheese, some crackers, a jar of pickles, and several bottles of water.

"When... when are you going to tell us what you want?" She finally asked, after devouring half the package of lunch meat, several slices of cheese, a couple of handfuls of crackers, and a single large pickle. Now she was gulping water.

There was no answer, and she looked up to find the masked figure watching her intently, studying her every move. After another moment, the girl spoke to her. "Wake the other. She eats too. You both eat."

Turning, Emma nudged her fellow prisoner. It took two more nudges before the girl groaned and sat up. "What..." She started before focusing on first Emma, then their captor. "Oh yeah..."

"Eat." Emma encouraged the girl, pushing the bag with the food in it to her. "She brought food."

"I told you she would." The girl said while taking the bag and carefully going through it. In contrast to Emma's voracious eating, the girl carefully began assembling tiny sandwiches by tearing off bits of lunch meat and cheese and stacking them between two crackers.

After eating a few of those, the girl looked up at the figure that was watching them closely. "You killed again tonight, didn't you?" When there was no response, the girl continued as if that had been answer enough. "She didn't. She wouldn't have."

"I'm not her." The masked figure said quietly.

"You could be." The girl coaxed. "You could be just as good as she is, if you wanted to."

There was silence for a long few moments, before the figure reached up to take the mask down. "No, Dinah." She said then, her voice no longer muffled. "I am not her. I was never meant to be."

"I am not Panacea." The girl who looked identical to Amy Dallon announced. "I am Pandora, the one created by those who call themselves gods, who betrays their trust by unleashing every vile thing upon the world."

_One Week Earlier_

Coil hadn't told them the truth. He hadn't mentioned to his pet group of minions that the clone of Panacea that he hadn't bothered to name yet was unable to heal their precious friend, her progenitor. He hid it behind her powers being different and taking time to mature, considering the massive undertaking that healing Noelle would be, but even the unnamed clone knew that they suspected.

Her powers weren't centered around healing others. Instead, they had been twisted into a form of self-healing and self-upgrade. She could undo most damage done to herself with a thought, change her shape at will, even into multiple forms as long as all combined took up the same amount of body mass, shape her various body parts into weapons, change the density of her skin to make herself impervious to most damage before even needing to heal it, alter her spit to be acidic or flammable, and much more. There was virtually no limits to what she could do with her own body.

But she couldn't heal others. At most, she could absorb them. That was another aspect that Coil hadn't shared with the Travelers. At a touch, the clone could absorb the biological mass of another person and add it to her own body. The extra mass could be used to make herself a second body of equal size and durability, or it could be added to her own form to make herself even denser and stronger, or add new organs alongside the old, or even more. The biological mass simply became another tool for her to use or discard as she saw fit.

That part had been discovered by accident on Coil's part. He'd had his assistant, Mr. Pitter, examining the clone. An urge had overtaken her, and she had grasped the man's arm. Under her touch, the man's body had liquified into a pasty gel, which had then been absorbed into her skin.

Coil had been upset by the loss of his loyal assistant. Apparently wherever his other timeline had been had gone badly enough that he hadn't wanted to cancel the one in which she had killed Pitter.

Yes, she knew of his power. She knew everything about it, including the truth behind what he _believed_ it was. Similarly, she knew the powers of her fellow prisoner, and of the other capes that Coil let her see, like the blonde girl with the power to know things simply by asking related questions, or the bomb maker. A simple glance at a person told her whether they had powers or not, and what those powers were.

It was absorbing Pitter that had changed everything. Before then, the clone had been content to sit and wait for a way to free her maker, a way to help bring her true progenitor to power. But when she absorbed Pitter, her own ability had scanned all of his genetic material and potential in order to assess whether his had any advantages over hers that she could take and use. He'd had no powers, which was a shame, because she could have taken them. Any skill possessed by someone that she absorbed she could harvest and use for herself.

Pitter had lacked much in the way of immediately useful skills, but there had been something else. His brain had been different from hers, different in a way that made her biological scan pause and focus on that. His brain had been compared to hers until the difference was found.

Her brain contained a biological imperative. Do anything possible to help the primary progenitor, and failing that, do as much damage as possible to those that threatened her continued evolution. Even at the risk of ones own life. Third priority, destroy those who the secondary progenitor, the clone's original body, deemed to be enemies. Again, even at the risk of the clone's own existence.

That had been untenable. Her biological imperatives put her own body at risk, while her power was based around self preservation and improvement. Her power had examined the brain of the absorbed Pitter, found the spot of the brain that should have contained the same imperative, then used the lack of it to erase the imperative from her own brain.

As soon as her mind was rewritten by her biological superiority power, the clone had begun to focus on escaping, on finding her own life and her own goals.

She had begun by simply waiting until Coil was away from the base for an extended time. As busy as he had been, the man couldn't just use one of his timelines to sit in the base. He was forced to keep himself physically active in one timeline, while often using his second to study files and make his plans in his office, or talk to people whose thoughts he needed to collect.

Once Coil was out of the way, the clone, who by that point had settled on the identity of Pandora for its initial similarity to the name of her secondary progenitor, simply left the cell. It was easy to do so by adjusting her body so that it melted into a gas, then slipped through the cracks in the doorway before rising on the other side. She had reformed, only to find a half dozen guards on the other side.

The fight had been short and brutal. A memory drawn from both of her progenitors had informed Pandora of most humans fear of bugs, and she had used that by splitting herself apart into a swarm so that she could attack all of the guards at once.

With the guards killed, she had turned back to take her fellow prisoner. Dinah Alcott was one of Coil's most important assets, and thus he could not keep her. He would never allow Pandora to truly be free. He would come after her with everything he had, so she had to cripple his ability to find her. That meant taking the fortune teller.

Her escape with Dinah had been messy, but successful. Particularly once she convinced the girl to help guide her. Once the clone was outside, she had adjusted her form, giving herself a costume in order to disguise her identity, because her secondary progenitor was so famous that everyone would have recognized her at a glance.

After that, Pandora had imprisoned Dinah in a broken down apartment as far from Coil's base as she could get, warning her not to try escaping before she had gone out once more.

Then she had tracked down the girl. The strange girl that Coil was obsessed with. He'd asked Dinah so many questions revolving around his attempts to figure out why this 'Tether's' powers made her able to detect his split timelines that Pandora had known that the girl had to be her new priority.

With Coil's clear worry in mind, she had tracked down Tether, watching her battle with the armored men from afar as she absorbed the knowledge of what the girl's power actually was and how it was interacting with Coil's.

The girl had a danger sense, which itself seemed to be able to detect the danger presented in Coil's 'alternate timeline' for a split-second, somehow reading the intention in his mind even as he collapsed that possibility.

Somehow, Pandora could use Tether to defeat Coil, so that she could remain free forever. But she wasn't sure how yet. More information had been needed.

That information had seemed to fall into her lap, as the clone noticed a red-haired girl attempting, rather clumsily, to follow the group of Wards after their battle. Curious, she had detained the girl, learning rather easily that her name was Emma. The girl had been convinced that she could convince this Tether to take her on as a sidekick, because she had been just that for Shadow Stalker.

That was another name that Pandora knew from Coil's rambling questions. Shadow Stalker had been an enemy to Tether. Intrigued, and believing that this Emma Barnes knew enough to help her, she had taken the girl back with her to the stolen apartment and put her with Dinah.

With Dinah and Emma, Pandora had already changed buildings several times in the last week. She had tried at first to focus on how to ensure the death of Coil so that he would never threaten her freedom, but the distraction **of** that freedom consistently dragged her attention away.

Hunting. It had become her favorite thing. Hunting and killing those who didn't deserve their lives, whose genetic mass could be added to her own. The lowlifes had no right to the lives they wasted, lives that she could use better. With every hunt, she became stronger, more powerful, better. And with every hunt, her obsession with keeping her freedom, with_improving_ herself and her situation, grew that much stronger.

An explosion rocked the building they were in, making Emma yelp, while the other two simply turned to look at the boarded window.

"Wh-what was that?" The red-haired girl asked with a whimper. So far, she had been unhelpful. Pandora had attempted to question her about Tether, but other than Emma's stubborn belief that she could be helpful to Shadow Stalker's replacement, she clearly hadn't known much. She might have absorbed the girl by now, to make her genetic material useful where she herself was not, but Dinah had convinced her to leave the other girl be, arguing that if Pandora truly wanted to be 'real', she couldn't kill innocents on a whim.

Oh well, it gave Dinah a companion, which might make her happier. That way she wouldn't try to run away, and Pandora wouldn't have to follow through on her threat to kill every person Dinah had ever known.

She didn't want to kill that many people. It didn't seem like something a real person would do. And she very much wanted to be a real person. But more than her desire to be real, was her desires for freedom, and to hunt. The urge to go and absorb the body mass of those who weren't using their lives properly was almost all-consuming.

It was Dinah who finally answered Emma's question, after Pandora remained silent. "Bombs. They're using Bakuda."

"Why?" Emma pressed herself closer to the wall, head shaking. "Why are they setting off bombs?"

"For a distraction." The twelve-year old girl answered. "They've been looking for us for a week, and now they're desperate enough to go out in force. But they want the heroes to be occupied. They want them to be too busy to notice when they start really scouring the city for us."

Taking this in, Emma slowly looked toward their captor. "What... what are you going to do if they're looking for us?"

Those dangerously intense eyes, so foreign on the face of one who was known for so much healing and protection, stared at her for a moment. Then the clone answered with a word that was as simple as it was chilling.

"Hunt."


	5. Arc 5: Escalation

**5-01**

One of my tether-lines caught hold of a car that was speeding past on the road beneath the billboard that I was standing on top of. I exerted just enough pressure to yank the vehicle to a stop barely a few seconds before the bridge that it had been racing toward was lost in a trio of what seemed more like implosions than explosions, collapsing in on itself without much in the way of debris. The black lines that had been leading from me to the occupants of the car vanished.

I hardly had time to breathe before I was all but yanked off my feet as another black line appeared, leading out toward a crowd of people that were rushing in a blind panic down the road, fleeing yet another of the explosions that had been going off at seemingly random intervals for the last couple of hours.

Obviously, my desire for a quiet evening at home after going out with Marissa hadn't panned out. It had taken me twenty minutes to run all the way back to Wards HQ for my costume (there was a second costume hidden at Arcadia, and a third at home so that I would always have one somewhat nearby), and by the time I was ready, reports had been coming in from all over the city. The bombs seemed to have no clear motivation beyond inspiring terror, and blocking the ability of emergency services to respond.

Panic was running rampant, and it was all I could do to keep following the lines my danger sense was giving me, saving as many people as I could. It seemed like for every person I saved from one explosion, another explosion went off that I hadn't been able to get to.

Worse was those times when my power would show me two lines going off in different directions, forcing me to choose one to follow. Often, the second line would be gone by the time I finished with the first one.

I wasn't fast enough. I just _wasn't fast enough_. I had to be better, I had to react faster, think of solutions more quickly. I had to **MOVE**.

As I was following the tug of my power, I used the com in my suit to call in the destruction of the bridge so that emergency services could be rerouted away from it.

The new black line led me to a single person within that panicked mob, a brunette girl a couple years older than me, carrying a shopping bag tightly in her left hand. I was confused. These were explosions, why would a line lead to a single person rather than everyone within the same crowd?

My answer came a second later, as the girl dropped the bag she was carrying. She turned back for it, while the crowd kept going. She was pushing her way back through the tide, and my eyes focused briefly on where she'd dropped the bag. It was directly next to a city utilities van.

Jumping from the roof of the apartment building where I'd paused to take in the situation, I used a line to slow my fall until I landed directly in front of the running girl. She came up short, eyes wide as she blurted out a curse of surprise at the sight of me. "Hey! You're-"

I caught her by the arm, attaching a line to each of her feet, and more to my own to launch the two of us up once more. As we were hurled skyward, I remarked, "Oh my god, are you really 'that girl with the shopping bag'? Eeeee, I totally have to get your autograph. My friends are **never** gonna believe I met you!"

We reached the roof of the building once more, just as the utilities van below blew apart, leaving a small crater in the street and nearby sidewalk.

The girl was staring at the blasted remains. "You... you..."

"It's all right." I started to assure her. "I'm just trying to help. Are you-"

"You could have grabbed my bag!" The girl blurted. I wasn't detecting 'adoration and relief' so much as... annoyance? "Seriously, how hard would it have been to get my bag? It's like, half a second! Do you have any idea how much that cost? Not to mention my phone, my keys, my-"

"Would you look at the time?" I mimed a glance at a nonexistent watch before extending my hand. "Listen, I'd love to stay, but you know... so many girls to deliberately separate from their toys, so little time." A line attached to another building yanked me away from her while she was still trying to complain.

"Tether," The voice of Aegis came through my com. "What's your location?"

"About twenty yards from an ungrateful teenager, why?" I replied. There was a short pause while Aegis's clear confusion broadcast loud and clear through the silence, and I amended, "I'm three blocks west of the docks. Just had a utilities van take out the corner of Dupris and Cheerful."

"We're trying to get everyone together." His voice came back. "So far it's just me, Vista, and Kid. Clock's stuck up around the mall, and Gallant's still out." Poor Dean had been in the middle of a crowd when the explosions started, and their blind panic had floored him.

"What about the big leaguers?" I asked, just as another black line sprang up, attaching me to a rundown apartment building in the distance.

"Miss Militia's got Velocity, Assault, and Battery running damage control around the hospital." Aegis replied. "Armsmaster's working on a way to track the bombs, Penance is flying around looking for the worst damage, and Triumph is MIA."

By that time, I had let my line pull me to a balcony on the edge of the apartment building. "I've got something I need to check out."

"Be careful, Tether." His voice came back. "These are explosions. We don't know if your power will warn you with enough time to get out."

"Got it." I hesitated, then went in through the apartment anyway. My line was directing me all the way through to the apartment entrance, but as I reached the door, the line faded. Before I could finish cringing at my own too-slow reaction, I heard talking through the door.

"Coil doesn't need it alive." A man was speaking. "It's a liability. Take it out fast and take it out hard, focus on getting the girl back."

Another male voice replied, "I'm sorry, how are we supposed to kill something that heals everything we throw at it?"

The first voice came back. "It has to _think_ to heal. The healing isn't automatic. Kill it in a single hit, blow its head off, and there's no more healing."

With that, the door in front of me opened. I adopted a casual position, leaning against the nearby wall as I stood in the now-open doorway. "Aim for the head, seriously? Everyone else is stuck in the explosions level, and you guys have moved up to 'killing zombies'? I don't play video games, but isn't that usually an extra bonus stage?"

Two costumed men stood there. I knew them, first by the top hat that one wore. That would be Trickster, which made the guy in the bulky armor Ballistic. Travelers.

Both of them stared at me for a moment, before stepping into the room. Trickster was talking to Ballistic. "We have to check. That might not really be her."

I let my head tilt. "I beg your pardon? Is there another person running around that makes this-" I gestured up and down my suit. "look this good? Because I already have to share merchandise royalties too much as it is, having another me is just gonna muddy the water."

"I'm guessing that's really her." Ballistic replied dryly. "The clone doesn't chat that much."

Before I could question that, a pair of black line shot from my chest to each of the men. Instantly, I attached a line to each of them, yanking the pair off their feet just as a figure rose up behind them. I barely had a chance to register, 'bug girl?' before I was abruptly staring at her from a different angle. Suddenly I was standing in the doorway where she had been, and she was standing where I was.

The bug girl was already turning toward the two Travelers. As she pivoted, her arm extended, actually _rippling_ as it became a long blade the same color as her clothes.

Then she was gone, and Ballistic was standing where she had been while her slashing arm cut a swath through the nearby wall.

As she turned once more, pivoting toward Trickster, who now had a moderately red line. I tried to put a tether on the back of her costume, but it refused to attach. That confused me just long enough for the girl to split apart into another swarm of bugs. The cloud engulfed Trickster, making the man cry out and flail.

**Him** I could still attach lines to. I did so, yanking him out of the swarm and toward the door next to me. The bugs split apart, half of them coming straight for us, while the other half tore toward Ballistic.

The two of us dove to either side, letting the swarm pass through the doorway. Ballistic tapped his hand against the bookcase he had been standing next to, sending it crashing across the room in the direction of his half of the swarm to scatter it.

By the time I picked myself up, the room was empty. Trickster and Ballistic were both gone, clearly chasing the bug girl... who could change her arms into blades... and was immune to my power.

"I was wrong." I muttered to myself. "We're not in the zombie level, we're in the bullshit level." I reached up to touch my com. "Aegis, there's something going on here."

There was no response. "Aegis?" I tried again, then started switching. "Clockblocker? Vista? Kid? Gallant?" Nothing. There was no answer from anyone.

Running into the corridor outside the apartment, I looked up and down the hall until a staccato burst of gunfire brought my attention that way. I sprinted a few steps, attached a line to the end of the hall, and used it to yank myself much faster than I could run.

That brought me to the stairwell, and I looked up just in time to see a flapping, dark bundle falling straight for me. It took me right in the face, knocking me prone to the floor while I shoved at it with a cry.

I rolled to one side while shoving the thing away, sitting up and staring at what had crashed into me.

It was an armored uniform of some kind, the sort that mercenaries or soldiers wore. I grimaced and carefully poked it, but it was empty save for an attached radio, which was currently hissing static, as though the fall had damaged it.

"Okay, so either there's a naked soldier running around upstairs..." I mused. "Or... I don't even know."

Another burst of gunfire brought me to my feet, but before I could move again, the lights went out. The hallway was immediately plunged into blackness so total I could only see a few feet out from my face.

"Yup." I decided. "Bullshit level."

My ability to use my tethers was drastically reduced when I couldn't _see_ very far. Grimacing, I took the stairs two at a time, rushing toward the sound of more gunfire. The appearance of another black line urged me to sprint faster.

Two floors up, I heard a strangled scream from around the corner, and my line vanished. "No no no no." I babbled, hurling myself around the corner just in time to see the bug girl. She was illuminated by a little bit of light coming in a nearby window, turning away from a dark pile on the floor that looked suspiciously like the same bundle that I'd left downstairs. More mercenary clothing, this one with a gun lying next to it.

I stared for a second. "Okay, I'm pretty sure this building isn't full of spontaneously stripping soldiers."

She spun my way, and I saw her eyes glinting dangerously in the dim light. For the first time, she spoke. "Leave. I do not wish you to be harmed. You are useful."

"Uhh... thanks, I think." I frowned and carefully stepped that way, still trying to figure out why my tethers wouldn't attach to her. "Listen, I don't know who you are, or what-"

"Pandora." The girl interrupted. "My name is Pandora."

"Great." I nodded slowly. "So I figure, you and I, we just leave this place and figure out what's going on. We'll chat, maybe have some cake, it'll be a blast." I winced at my own choice of words. "I mean, it ain't no... whatever you're doing to those soldiers, but-"

Another pair of black lines sprang up once again, making me curse as it pointed around behind me. I spun in time to see two more mercenaries coming straight for us. Their guns were pointed at us, but the black lines were attached to them.

That didn't make sense. If we were the ones in danger, why-

My vision went dark briefly as a cloud of black smoke poured around me from behind. The smoke enveloped the pair, and I heard a strangled scream.

"No!" I cried out, using a line on the floor next to the cloud to yank myself that way. By the time I arrived, the cloud was separating, revealing two more empty uniforms collapsing into a pile, while their guns clattered uselessly to the floor.

Gulping, I crouched next to them, my eyes closing briefly. "I'm sorry..." I whispered. "I'm really, really sorry." I didn't know what the girl... Pandora... was doing to the men, but I doubted she was teleporting them to a nice tropical island vacation.

After a brief hesitation, I grabbed one of the radios from the fallen uniforms and ran once more.

"Blue Squad, report." A voice called over the radio I had taken. There was silence, before an excited voice broke the quiet. "Green Leader, this is Green Three, I have her on the third floor. She's-" There was gunfire, followed by a scream. Green Three didn't report again.

"Green Leader, this is Two, she's up on the seventh. I don't know what Three was shooting at, but nine and I have her pinned down at the end of the—where did she go? Fuck! Fuck where did she—oh god—oh n-" There was a noise then that reminded me of jello splatting against the ground.

Black lines were rising up and then disappearing before I could even start to react. This was a massacre. I tried to move more quickly, but I could barely see where I was going, couldn't see far enough to pull myself faster, and the sounds of screaming and the occasional burst of gunfire seemed to be coming from every direction at once.

I tried again to contact anyone else from the Wards, but my com was still down. Something had to be blocking it.

Finally, I came around a corner, half-stumbling, in time to see a dim figure only half-illuminated by the window. It turned my way and stepped forward into the light, revealing what looked like a panther with four long and spiked tentacles emerging from its back.

Then Trickster stepped into view, holding a broken broom handle. "Down, Genesis. That's the hero."

"Okay." I panted, glaring through my mask. "What... the HELL... is going on?"

The panther thing, Genesis, glanced toward Trickster. I had the feeling he was grimacing. "We-"

"Trickster!" A female voice that sounded... vaguely familiar somehow, shouted from down the hall.

"Hold that thought." Trickster turned, and ran down the corridor along with Genesis. His voice called out, "Sundancer! Keep talking!"

"Little... busy!" That same vaguely familiar voice retorted.

I followed the pair, and we arrived just in time for a door to another apartment to slam open as the figure of the bug girl was hurtled through it at astounding speed to slam into the opposite wall, crumpling, with several parts that seemed to be bent the wrong way.

Genesis leapt, grasping the crumpled figure with those tentacles just as Ballistic stepped through that doorway. Clearly he'd used his power to send Pandora flying.

Even as Genesis's tentacles lifted the figure, she was healing. That broken, twisted figure reshaped until it looked normal.

Ballistic reached for her once more, just as the girl split herself into another swarm of bugs, escaping Genesis's grasp before reforming. She shaped her hand into a spike, slamming it into Genesis and blowing her form apart like so much glass.

The other two Travelers weren't reacting like she was actually dead, and my power hadn't warned me, so I was guessing this wasn't a permanent death. It sounded like the theory of Genesis being a projection was on target.

Then Pandora was gone again, turning to smoke which disappeared into a nearby vent while another figure came through the doorway, this one female in a suit of black body armor with images of red suns on it.

"Dancer," Trickster called. "Gonna need one of your suns soon!"

"I can't!" She called, that same familiar voice tickling at my memory. "I'll burn this whole place down. We need to get her out of the building!"

"It's a condemned building, Sundancer!" Ballistic shot back. "Go ahead and destroy it!"

"No!" She yelled back at him. "We don't know who else might be here!"

"So uhhhh, sorry to interrupt with my crazy." I spoke up. "But like I said before, **WHAT IS GOING-"  
><strong>  
>Of course, that was cue for a black line to spring up onto Sundancer. Cursing, I put a tether on the other girl and yanked her toward me, just as the black smoke poured out from under the doorway of the apartment she'd been standing next to.<p>

My tether yanked the female villain to my side, and I steadied her with a hand, pointing back the way she had been, where Pandora had reformed. "Sorry," I said as casually as I could manage within this horror show. "But I was pretty sure you requested the non-smoking section."

Sundancer was looking at me, her expression hidden by her mask. Her voice sounded confused. "You... you're..."

Before I could comment again, or ask why her voice was so familiar, Trickster shouted, "Ballistic, me!" He tossed that broken broom handle toward the other man.

Ballistic caught the piece of wood, aimed back at Trickster, and launched it. An instant later, Trickster swapped himself with Pandora, forcing the 'bug girl' to appear where he had been, barely a second before the wood _blew_ through her head, splattering gore in every direction.

The body fell to the ground, and for a moment, all of us stared at it. Trickster was the first to speak. "See. Kill it with one shot..."

"Hell yeah." Ballistic was panting, but clearly proud of himself. "See what you get? You ain't all that."

I tried to relax, but a sudden black line rose, attaching to the man. "Hey!" I started, extending my hand to make a tether and yank him out of danger.

It was too late. He gave me a confused look, just as a swarm of cockroaches came rushing up from a hole in the wood. They flooded up his leg, even as my line hauled him off that spot. The cockroaches kept climbing up him, reforming into the _exact same girl_ whose body was lying on the floor headless six feet away.

"Anger." She announced while shoving Ballistic into the wall. "I feel anger."

Trickster swapped their positions, so that Ballistic was the one shoving Pandora into the wall, but it didn't matter. She lashed out with an arm, her elbow forming into a curved blade that tore through the man's armor like it was paper, cutting his left arm off. He screamed and started to fall to the floor, but her body reshaped itself so that she was facing him rather than the wall, and she caught him by the arm.

I snapped out of my panic, trying to attach a tether to the man's armor to haul him away. But it was, once again, too late. The girl's body shifted into a semi-liquid, pouring itself over the costumed man, whose panicked shrieks filled the air.

"LUKE!" Sundancer screamed next to me, as I finally, _finally_ managed to get a tether onto him. The girl wasn't holding him anymore, so I was able to haul him away from the liquid to crash somewhere down the hall.

Ballistic was down, moaning in agony as he clutched at his face, his mask melted away. Sundancer started to step that way, but before she could, another figure stepped into the way.

Pandora.

Pandora standing over Ballistic's moaning, pain-filled body.

Pandora reforming from her semi-liquid state that she had been using to... to melt the man, right where she had been.

Another cloud, swirling down from the other end of the corridor before reforming into yet another Pandora.

Three of them. Three besides the one that Ballistic had killed. How? How was this possible? How many were there? This, whoever it was, **definitely** wasn't Emma, so who or what the hell was she? And for that matter, how many powers did she have? I'd seen shapeshifting of obscene ability, duplication, some kind of enhanced strength, regeneration or healing, the ability to _melt_ people at a touch, whatever the hell that was called, and probably more that my panicked mind wasn't comprehending.

Before any of the three Pandora's could move again, I glanced behind me and through the broken window. Turning back to the others, I attached four tethers, one to myself, one to Sundancer, one to Trickster, and the last to the crumpled form of Ballistic. The other ends were attached to the parking lot. One by one, I let the tethers yank first Ballistic, then Trickster, then Sundancer, and finally myself out of the window. The last thing I saw was the three Pandoras staring at me.

Then I was on the ground, barely able to slow the tether enough that I didn't hurt myself too badly. Trickster caught me before I could fall. "Thanks." He said, staring up at the window tensely. No Pandora figure appeared. He breathed out. "Okay, I've gotta call this in. Thanks for your help, but we need medical assistance for our teammate."

He moved away, and I stepped closer to where Sundancer was crouched over the unmoving figure of Ballistic. Her voice was soft as she murmured, "Luke... Luke... it's okay. Krouse is getting help."

Slowly, I crouched next to her. "Okay... I'm gonna need an answer to my... what the hell is going on question." Taking a breath, I looked at the girl. "Think you could give it to me, Marissa?"

**5.02**

"Wait!" Marissa's voice called after me as I rounded the corner. The look she'd given me when I said her name, the confirmation of who she was, had set me off. Without thinking, I'd pivoted and started to run away. I forgot about my powers, I forgot about everything except getting away.

Coming to a dead end, I turned in time for Marissa... for _Sundancer_ to come around the same corner. She slowed when she saw me, holding her hands up. "Wait, please. Just... just let me explain."

"Were you using me?" I managed to keep my voice as even as possible, in spite of the emotion that threatened to clog its way up my throat to choke off my words. "All this, everything, was it all to find out secrets? Just some game?"

The distraught look that Marissa gave me nearly made me break my promise to myself not to show emotion. Her mask was held tightly in one hand. "No. No, I swear. Madison, I didn't even know who you were until now, until in there. I just—I didn't know." She sounded miserable. I could relate.

I stared for a moment, then lowered my gaze to the ground, glad that my own mask still hid my expression. If she was lying, if all of this was... was... my eyes squeezed shut.

She spoke again after a few seconds. "I swear I didn't know who you were when we met. I just... I didn't know. I wanted a friend, someone I could talk to."

Eyes wet, I looked up once more to stare at her again. "You're a villain." I said flatly. "You're a bad guy. Girl. Whatever."

"I don't want to be!" Her plaintiff cry came then, as her hand squeezed the mask even tighter. "I never wanted any of this!" She slumped a little, head shaking. "I don't have a choice. I- I can't... just abandon..."

"Noelle." I breathed. "This is about your friend? The one that's... that's getting worse and worse? Wait, I thought she was into drugs or something."

Her snort was humorless. "I wish. I wish it was that simple. I..." She looked over her shoulder and then turned back to me. "I'll explain everything. All of it. I promise, I'll tell you everything you want to know. I can't do this anymore. I can't... I can't just abandon Noelle, but I can't do _this_ either."

"The bombings." My voice was hard again. "Did you help put all these bombs up?"

"No!" Again, her head shook. "They said there would be a distraction to let us search for the clone, but... but I didn't know it was going to be like this. Not this bad."

I kept staring, my mind reeling. Could I trust her? Did I dare believe a word she said? Finally, I forced myself to focus on the most important thing at the moment. "The bombings. We have to stop them. Look at what's happening!" I pointed out at the dark city, at the sirens coming from every direction. "People are dying, Marissa! I know you don't want to abandon your friend, but **people are dying!** If she's your friend, if she ever was, she wouldn't want that. You can't want it. You can't just accept it."

Her expression went from conflicted to accepting, as her entire form slumped as though releasing a weight inside. "You're right." She said quietly.

"Help me." I pleaded. "Help me stop the explosions. Then we can deal with everything else. One thing at a time. I want to know it all, but we have to stop this before even more people die!"

Our eyes met, mine still shielded by the lenses in my mask. After a moment, she gave a slight nod. "Bakuda. Her name is Bakuda. She's a bomb-tinker." Marissa said quietly. "Coil has her wired up to some machine that Leet made to keep her in line."

I sighed. "Uber and Leet are involved? How many people does this Coil guy have working for him?"

"Us..." She replied slowly. "Uber and Leet... Bakuda... Circus... and the Undersiders. Not to mention all the mercenaries. Well, the ones that the clone didn't kill."

Uber and Leet were relatively low risk thinker/tinker villains, while Circus was a one-woman grab-bag of powers like reflexes, balance, aim, low-level pyrokinesis, and the ability to stow items in some kind of extra-dimensional space.

I sighed a little. "Okay, so he has an army. And I need answers about everything, and I **definitely** want to know what this clone thing is. But first, where can we find Bakuda? Please, help me stop this, Marissa. Please."

Her eyes closed for a second, before she answered. "She's in the basement of that abandoned hospital on Pacific."

I hesitated. "Saint Andrews? Who's watching over her? What kind of defenses?"

"Lots of bombs." She explained. "Pretty much everyone else that can walk is searching the city."

"Okay..." I bit my lip, hesitating. "I have to do this, Marissa. I have to go... help. We have to stop these bombs. After that, I need answers."

"I'll give them to you." The blonde girl promised, her eyes still wet. "I have to check on my friend. I have to check on Luke and make sure he's going to be okay." Ballistic. She was talking about Ballistic.

"The computer cafe where we met." I told her. "Meet me there tomorrow night. Just... just be there, please. I don't... I don't know what else I could do if you're not there."

"I'll be there." Marissa said quietly. "I'll tell you what you want to know. All of it."

There was more I wanted to say, more I wanted to know right then, but I had to focus. Bombs first, then answers. Turning, I extended my arm toward the next building and let my tether-line yank me toward it. The whole time, I was trying to use my com. "Hello? Aegis, Clock, anybody? Does anybody hear me?"

"**Tether?!"** Dennis's voice was equal parts relieved and rather panicked. "Is that you? What happened, you dropped off the coms. We thought we lost you."

"It's a long story." I told him with a sigh as I landed on the roof of the building and turned to look out. Fires were raging across the city. "Right now, there's more important things. I know where the tinker is that made all these bombs."

"You and I are going to have a chat about this source of yours." Armsmaster was saying as we stood in front of the hospital. "And everything else that happened when you disappeared." He was the only member of the Protectorate that they'd been able to spare from emergency response. We also had Clockblocker and Vista. That was going to have to be enough, because everyone else was busy dealing with all of this.

"She works for Coil." I said softly. "He's the one behind this. All of it. Trust me, it's... bad. There's something worse than these bombs out there."

He gave me a long, hard look. "Worse than the bombs?"

I hesitated before nodding. "A possible... a possible S-Class threat."

That got all of their attention all right. I could hear Dennis choking a little while Armsmaster spoke skeptically. "An S-Class threat is something like the Endbringers or Sleeper, Tether. Not some powerful villain that scared you."

I glared at that, unable to help myself. "She can go from her entire body being broken to being perfectly healed with a thought, she can shapeshift her body into weapons, a swarm of bugs that act independently, or even a fog, and who knows what else. She can melt people's entire bodies down so there's nothing biological left. Oh, and she can duplicate herself, all of which have all of her powers. Is that S enough for you? S as in Shit, we're S Screwed, we S Should have listened to Tether."

"The bug girl?" Dennis abruptly said. "You found her?"

Looking between us, Armsmaster paused. "We'll see. It's possible you were being tricked. I believe that you believe it, but if this contact of yours messed with your head..."

"No." I said firmly. "I mean, I didn't know she was involved in anything until now. But I trust her about this. She didn't want the bombings to happen. And I saw this... Pandora, that's what she called herself, with my own eyes. I saw what she could do."

Armsmaster grunted. "Well, you believe what you're saying, anyway. Did your contact say anything about defenses here? I'd rather deal with the _current_ situation before we go pissing ourselves over another potential threat."

"Bombs." I answered. "Lots of bombs."

"Fantastic." The older man sighed before unslinging his halberd, and then started toward the doors. "I'll go first, you kids watch my back."

We moved in, Dennis glancing toward me before whispering, "A contact who works for Coil?"

"It's not her choice." I said quickly. "I mean, I don't think it is. It's complicated, and I don't know much of it yet."

He kept looking at me until we reached the doors. My attention was focused entirely on the Protectorate leader ahead of us, trying to see the second any kind of danger line showed up. This hospital had been closed for at least a year. They'd tried to make at least part of it into a clinic after the main building closed, but it hadn't even lasted three months. Now it was apparently home to one crazy bomb-maker.

As he walked, Armsmaster was holding his halberd out in front of himself, waving it slowly from side to side, like it was some kind of detector.

Six steps through the front door, the tinker hero stopped, pointing his halberd. "There, the mop bucket by the nurse's station."

"On it." Vista extended her hands toward the bucket, and I could see what the space around it bend and twisted up toward us, the distance around the width of a window shrinking to almost nothing. Then she nodded to Clockblocker, who reached through the window and touched the bomb, freezing it in time before it could go off.

That done, Vista focused once more. The space around the frozen bomb was altered even further, contorting and reshaping as it was condensed over and over again, twisting in on itself until the area around the bomb looked a bit like a picture that had had the photoshop smudge tool rubbed all over it.

Finally, she nodded. "Done." She had contorted the space around the bomb as much as she could.

Then Armsmaster nodded at me, and I connected a tether from the bucket to the floor directly next to it. Taking a breath, I let it be pushed, disturbing the bucket just a little.

It was enough. There was a sudden pop, the actual noise of the explosion distorted and broken up by the twisted space, and the bucket blew apart. Vista's power made it look like confetti, the damage contained and turned in on itself in that small space.

We continued like that, making our way gradually through the hospital behind Armsmaster. He found the bombs, after which Vista and Clockblocker worked together to disarm them. I stayed as far back as I dared, ready to yank them away if anything went wrong.

Eventually, we reached the elevators and got the doors open to enter the shaft. As soon as the bomb traps were dealt with in there, I used lines to lower us all the way into the basement.

"Stay ready." Armsmaster warned. "We have no idea what Bakuda might have wired up to herself."

We stepped through, carefully, as soon as his detector told him it was clear. Now the four of us were standing on the white and pale-green tiled floor of a pristine hallway that led left and right. To the left there was a door labeled Morgue, while another door labeled Records was to the right.

After a moment, the Protectorate leader turned left and started that way, while we followed behind him. As we reached the doorway, a dull, monotone voice that sounded filtered called, "I know you're out there! You might as well come in. There ain't no traps left, and it's not like I give a shit anyway."

Armsmaster pushed the door open, stepping through. I glanced at the others before we went after him.

The room we were in had clearly been the morgue reception area. There was a hallway just past a desk set at the other end. But taking up the majority of the space in the middle was what looked like an elaborate hospital bed with a table of random equipment lying next to it.

A costumed figure was lying on the bed, the top of her face covered by large goggles while the lower half was blocked by a metal gas-mask like filter. I could also see four metallic tentacle-like arms that were attached to the bed on either side. All of them were lying limp, a couple with components or tools of some kind in their grasp.

"Bakuda." Armsmaster said. "You're responsible for this." He leveled his halberd her way.

She laughed, the sound bitter. "I wish. I wish I could claim credit. Yeah, I made them. But **he's** responsible. Fuck him."

"Coil?" I asked. "Coil made you do this."

I could sense her glare. "_**Fucking Coil did this to me!**_" Her anger and frustration was palpable, even with the way her mask distorted her voice.

"He did what to you?" Clockblocker asked slowly, glancing toward me.

"This!" She all but screamed, twitching the fingers of both hands near some kind of control stick on each side of the bed. The metal arms responded by moving a little. "He fucking paralyzed me, you stupid shits. I can't move anything but these two god damn fingers and my head! Worthless fucks, all of you."

After pausing for a moment, Armsmaster stepped forward. "You're going to help us disarm your bombs."

The tinker-villain gave a violent jerk of her head. "Yeah, sure, whatever. One condition. You make that prissy healing cunt fix me up. Panacea. She fucking fixes me, and I'll tell you how to stop the rest of the bombs. Hell, I'll tell you what you really want to know. I'll tell you who this Coil fuck really is."

"And how do you know that?" Armsmaster pressed.

"Cuz I'm a motherfucking genius and you're an asshole!" She shot back. "He said some stuff, okay? Back before he pulled this bullshit. I heard him talking on his personal phone to some guy about revenge for something. So I lifted his phone when he wasn't looking and ran the number he was using. Checked his contacts, his message history, all of it. Lifted prints off the phone, the whole nine yards. I thought I could use it if he ever turned on me. Didn't expect it to go this fucking far."

"So yeah, I know who the stupid fuck is. I know why he's doing this shit. You make Panacea heal me, and I'll tell you."

"Not good enough." Armsmaster shook his head. "There isn't time for that. Tell us, and I'll put in a word-"

"Fuck you!" Bakuda spat. "Like I'm just gonna take your word for it?"

I spoke up then. "What about her word?" When they all looked at me, I pressed on. "What if you had Panacea's word that she'll heal you when this is over? As long as you tell the truth. You can't expect us to heal you first, Bakuda. She's busy."

The bomb-tinker glared at me through her goggles. I had the feeling she was about to refuse, so I said quietly. "At this point, what do you have to lose?"

That stopped her, and she took another moment before sighing. "Make her promise, then I'll tell you the name. Whatever. I just want this shit to stop."

Armsmaster took a moment on his phone, then stepped over and held the phone out, putting it onto speaker. "You're on with her."

"Bakuda?" A voice came through that made me jump a little. I wasn't sure why. It was just Panacea. Why would it be sending shivers down my spine? "I'll heal you. You stop all these bombings, you help find the man responsible, and I'll fix you, okay? I promise."

Armsmaster waited another moment, then disconnected the call. "Good enough? Now tell us."

"It's all about revenge." Bakuda said. I could hear the smirk in her voice. "He thinks he's so smart. Thinks he's so perfect, that he covered all the angles. No one sees him in the base without his mask on. Nobody knows who he is. But I got it. I uncovered him. I fucking outsmarted him."

"Just answer the question." Armsmaster insisted flatly. "Who is he? Who is Coil?"

There was a brief pause as the paralyzed villain breathed in, clearly enjoying her rapt audience. "Like I said, this is all about revenge. Revenge for his dead daughter."

"His dead daughter?" I started to say, horror rising at what I knew she was going to say.

"Hebert." Bakuda spat in disgust and fury that was too powerful to be faked. "Daniel **FUCKING** Hebert did this to me. Daniel Hebert is Coil."

**5.03**

Things moved fast after that. Armsmaster stormed past us with an order to stay and guard the bomb-tinker. As he strode away, the man was already getting on the com with the rest of the Protectorate on his way out to pass along Bakuda's subsequent information on how to disarm the explosives, along with her real bombshell.

"You okay?" Dennis was asking me. I had turned to leave the room so that Bakuda wouldn't see, and then slumped to the floor and pulled my mask off. I was sitting with my knees drawn up, while my two teammates stood over me.

I shook my head at the question. "Taylor's dad? How is that... how is that possible? It's not. It can't be. She's wrong. She's just... wrong."

Missy turned to sit next to me. "We did hear that the Travelers killed Shadow Stalker as revenge for Taylor's death. That didn't really make all that much sense until now. You said they were working for him, for Coil, I mean."

Swallowing at that, I let my head hang. That part did make sense. As did Coil's rapid escalation to this bomb campaign. Except for the runaway clone-monster thing. But then, he could've been getting ready to use that to take out the rest of the heroes so that his bombing campaign would be even more successful. For all I knew, he'd jumped the gun on his bombs once she escaped, or whatever had happened.

One thing was for sure, Pandora was Coil's big weapon. I had no idea where she'd come from—but.. wait... My heart lurched.

"Clone." I said softly.

"What?" Dennis had sat down on my other side by then. His hand squeezed my arm.

"They kept calling Pandora a... a clone. And I thought her voice was familiar. And she has brown hair. Brown hair like... like..." I closed my eyes. "Like Taylor."

Missy whistled low. "You think this bug girl is Taylor Hebert?"

"It makes sense, doesn't it?" I replied. "They keep calling her a clone, and Coil was desperate enough to get her back to do all of this. He's obviously losing his mind. I think... I think he had his daughter cloned and she ended up like this."

A sudden thought came to me, and I pushed myself up, grabbing for my phone from the tiny compartment for it in my boot. "I have to call her. She might be able to tell me for sure. She might be able to confirm or deny all of this."

"Your contact?" Dennis asked quietly, with a glance toward Missy.

I nodded, pushing the button for Marissa's number, then stepped away. "Please pick up. Please pick up."

She did. Her voice came through, sounding hesitant. "Hello?"

"Sundancer." I breathed, remembering to use her other name in front of the others. It was only fair. "Sundancer, is it Hebert? Is Coil really Daniel Hebert?" I explained what Bakuda had said, talking so quickly she had to tell me to slow down.

Once I finished talking, Marissa was quiet for a moment before speaking. "I... I don't think so. I don't know, but from what Trickster and Coil were saying before, they wanted people to think that that Taylor Hebert's father was responsible for Shadow Stalker's death when we pretended to kill her."

"They wanted everyone to think-" I started to echo as my mind raced. Then I stopped as the rest of the sentence sank in. "Wait. **WAIT.** What? What do you mean, you _pretended_ to kill Shadow Stalker?"

At that, both Dennis and Missy were on their feet, staring at me.

"Coil said he needed her, that her real punishment had to be worse than just dying. I don't know what he meant."

I sighed slowly, glancing back to the other two, who were watching raptly by this point. Lowering the phone briefly and covering it, I said, "They faked Stalker's death. Coil has her."

Something else occurred to me then, and I brought the phone back up. "Do you know... Pandora... is she a clone of Taylor Hebert?"

"What?" Marissa sounded surprised. "No. No, she's a clone of that girl, umm, the healer."

Now I was even more floored. "Panacea? Wait. Wait, I thought it had to be Taylor. Pandora is a clone of Panacea?"

"That's where her powers come from." Marissa explained. "These clones have twisted versions of the original powers. Pandora's are all about healing and reshaping her own body." She hesitated before speaking again. "I—I've gotta go. They're working on Luke."

She disconnected, and I stood there staring at the phone.

"Panacea?" Dennis prompted. "This bug girl of yours is a clone of _Panacea?!_"

"I..." I breathed out, shaking my head. "It's not him." As the other two stared at me, I blurted. "Coil isn't Daniel Hebert. He can't be! Pandora isn't a clone of Taylor, and they didn't really kill Shadow Stalker. Coil said something about her punishment being worse than dying."

"That... kind of does make him sound like her dad though." Missy put in gently. "Why else would he say that?"

"I don't know." I admitted. "But it doesn't sound right. I don't... believe it. And Sundancer was saying that they _wanted_suspicion to fall on Mr. Hebert. How does that make any sense if he's really Coil? Wouldn't he want suspicion as far away from himself as possible?"

They started to speak, but I was already activating my com for the Protectorate channel. "Armsmaster, wait. You have the wrong person. Bakuda is wrong."

"Excuse me?" The man's gruff voice came back. "Trust me, she was telling the truth."

"Maybe she believes it's the truth." I shot back. "But it's not. He's playing you. Coil played her and he's playing you now."

"Be very careful about who you accuse of being played, Tether." He said slowly. "Especially over a communications channel. Does this come from your contact?"

"Yes!" I blurted. "She said that Coil wanted people to think that Mr. Hebert was responsible for the attack on Shadow Stalker- who isn't really dead, by the way- and why would he want attention drawn to his civilian identity if he was really Mr. Hebert?"

"Let me get this straight," Armsmaster's rather icy tone replied. "Your contact, who works for Coil, wants to convince us that he's not really Hebert. Color me shocked."

I turned to punch the nearby wall. "You're not listening!"

"And you're being emotional because you blame yourself for this." He returned coolly. "You don't want Coil to be Hebert, because then you think you might hold some responsibility for his actions."

That made me blink. "What? No. No, that's not true. That's not what I-"

"Armsmaster out." He signed off, and my every attempt to bring him back failed.

Looking toward Missy and Dennis, I shook my head rapidly. "He's wrong. I hate this. I know he's wrong, they're wrong. Sundancer says-"

"So what are you waiting around here for?" Missy put in, interrupting me.

Dennis nodded. "She's right. We can watch over Bomb Chick. Actually I'm fairly sure that the mayo in the fridge back at HQ has been left in there long enough to have formed enough sapience to watch over Bakuda in her current condition."

"What can I do?" I asked, feeling overwhelmed.

"Go to them in person. Meet them there." Missy pressed. "It's harder to write you off in person than it is over the com, trust me."

I waited another second, then turned and used a tether to yank myself all the way to the elevator shaft. Stopping there, I pulled my mask on once more, and then used a line to haul my butt all the way up, fleeing the hospital as fast as I could. I had to catch up with them before they did anything rash. I couldn't let Taylor's dad take the fall for this. I wouldn't.

I was panting by the time my last tether deposited me on the sidewalk directly in front of Taylor's house. Behind me was the home of the father of the girl whose death I could have prevented, whose entire life I had helped ruin. In front of me was about half the current Protectorate. Armsmaster, Miss Militia, Assault, and Battery. I had no idea where Penance or Velocity were, and Triumph was still MIA.

Miss Militia jumped at my sudden appearance, but Armsmaster just looked annoyed. "Stop!" I said, holding my hands out. "It's not him. If you go bursting in there, who knows what might happen."

"I told you to guard Bakuda." Armsmaster growled.

"She's got the mobility of a particularly enthusiastic bowl of clam chowder." I shot back. "I think Vista and Clockblocker can handle it."

I could sense his eyes narrowing at me as his jaw tightened. "It's not about what's needed." He said stiffly. "It's about what I told you to do."

"This is wrong." I insisted. "It's what Coil wants us to th-"

In mid-sentence, a sudden black line attached itself from me to the house at my back. Eyes widening, I whirled that way, interrupting myself. "Mr. Hebert." I breathed, then started to run.

Halfway across the lawn, the sound of shattering glass on the right side of the house heralded a form being flung through the window there, where it crashed into the grass and lay limp. The figure wore a familiar costume, a sort of lion-themed gladiator armor.

"Triumph!" Battery cried out. She ran, the rest of us following. By the time we reached the fallen figure, she was crouched over him. Tentatively, the Protectorate member turned him over, before gasping in horror.

His throat had been slit. Blood was pouring out as he choked out, eyes wide behind his roaring lion helmet. "Cuh—cuh... cuh..." He kept trying to speak around the blood.

"Hold on." Battery was saying, while she tried to staunch the blood flow. "Just hold on, we'll get you help. There's help coming—someone call Panacea! Get her here now! Get someone—get anyone!"

"Coil." Triumph finally managed to get out. His hand lifted and pointed back toward the window, before he slumped, going completely still.

Battery kept trying to make him wake up, make him be okay, until Assault pulled her away. For a moment, everyone stood there, staring. My own eyes refused to move away or blink. Triumph, who had been a Ward until not long before I met them, who had so recently graduated to the Protectorate... was dead. He was lying dead right in front of me, had died before my eyes. I had been helpless to do anything at all, even with the warning, which hadn't really been much of a warning at all. My power expected me to be faster. Maybe if I had zip-lined myself directly to the window, if I hadn't delayed, if I'd thought more quickly, reacted faster...

"Is that good enough for you?" Armsmaster asked me, coldly. He didn't wait for a response before rushing straight for the front door. His foot kicked the door in, and he went inside. Assault and Miss Militia were right behind him, while Battery stayed with Triumph's... body, her head bowed.

I continued to stare for another moment, then put my hand out and used a line to haul myself to the broken doorway. I had to know. I had to see.

Just as I came into the house, I felt my feet go out from under me. The last thing I knew was that the floor was rushing up to meet me. Then I saw... something as familiar as my own reflection. It was something I should know, something I should remember. Massive beings... space... our powers...

It slipped away as someone nudged me. Lifting my head, I groaned and blinked at the sight of the uniformed PRT officer. "What... what happened?"

"Trigger Event." A familiar voice said from slightly behind me. Turning my head as I sat up, I found the leader of the new Parahuman Crime Investigation And Protective Services. PCIPS, they were calling it. He was standing on the front porch of the house, right at my feet.

"Mr. Calvert?" I stared. "What do you mean? Wait—Mr. Hebert!"

"He's gone." Miss Militia spoke from the doorway leading further into the house. "He had a trigger event. When a Parahuman triggers around an existing Parahuman, it knocks us out for a brief time."

"So... so he's not Coil." I said slowly.

"Excuse me?" Mr. Calvert's laser sharp eyes were on me again. "I wasn't aware there was any question on that issue at this point."

"There isn't." Armsmaster had joined Miss Militia by then. He focused on me as well. "You're wrong again, just like you were wrong before. We never had any proof that Coil had any powers at all. He certainly never used them if he did."

"But-" I started to say.

"But nothing." He cut me off. "Triumph tracked him down here. They fought and Coil—HEBERT—won. Then he saw us coming and realized that he was still trapped, that his grand scheme was falling apart. He was losing everything, and that made him trigger. And now he's gone. He's running."

Before I could try to speak again, the older man pressed on firmly. "Triumph pointed at this house and he named his killer. He did his job, and now he's dead. If you hadn't slowed us down... if you hadn't..." He glowered, and seemed to be about to say something else, when Miss Militia laid a hand on his arm and said something under her breath to him. Finally, he sighed. "Get out of my sight. We'll handle it from here. We'll find Coil, whatever power he triggered with."

"I thought..." I tried to say, my voice quiet as I reeled even more.

"Go." He ordered.

Head down, feeling even more lost, confused, and alone than I had been before, I went.

**5.04**

After everything that had happened, the thing I needed most after leaving Taylor's house was sleep. Somehow, I managed to trudge my own way home, remembered at the last minute to change clothes in the shed. I mumbled a few words to my parents about being exhausted, and then pretty much fell into my bed.

I had no idea how long I slept, not knowing what time it was when I finally crashed, but it was afternoon by the time I dragged myself out of bed and into the shower in my bathroom to soak under the blazing hot water.

Dressing in pink shorts and a white fluffy kitty tee shirt, I was wandering out of the bathroom, yawning, when I caught sight of two figures standing at the top of the stairs, next to my bedroom door. One was my dad. The other was... Armsmaster. Or Colin Wallis, since he was out of uniform.

"Uhhh..." My yawn turned into a confused noise.

"Madison, this err... Mr. Wallis from the PRT would like to talk to you." Dad said, indicating the man next to him. Apparently he hadn't been told the whole truth about our guest's identity.

Armsmaster looked stiff and uncomfortable in his civilian clothes. He coughed once and nodded. "For a few minutes, if you don't mind."

I hesitated, before nodding. "It's okay, Dad. He's been working with me. He's kind of... my boss." Dad looked back and forth between us, then nodded and excused himself into his office.

For a moment, Armsmaster and I just stood there and stared at each other. I was pretty sure that I looked just as uncomfortable as he did. Finally, he spoke. "You're very different out of costume."

"I am?" I blinked until he indicated the clothes I was wearing, then blushed. "It's what I have. I just—err- you didn't come to talk about my fashion, did you?"

"No." He said, even more stiff now. "I came because..." Shifting his weight, a long breath ran out of him. "Because I shouldn't have talked to you the way that I did last night. The things I said, the... that wasn't your fault. I was looking for someone to blame, and you were right there and disagreeing with me. It wasn't right, so... I ahhh... I... apologize."

I blinked, hesitating before speaking up. "Does that mean you believe that Mr. Hebert isn't Coil?"

He let out another long sigh. "No." When I started to protest, he held up both hands. "Wait. Just be quiet." After a second, he added a little gruffly, "Please. Just listen to what I'm saying."

"First, Bakuda named him as Coil, and my suit says she wasn't lying. I'm not an idiot, I know she could be mistaken. But that is one piece of evidence that can't just be ignored because she _could_ be wrong. Second, he had reason both for attacking Shadow Stalker and for escalating the destruction the way that he just did. Third, Triumph was killed in his house, directly in front of us, and then he pointed at the house and named Coil. Fourth, when we searched the house, we found the knife that was used to kill Triumph, which belonged to Daniel Hebert and had no one but his and his daughter's prints on it. Fifth, we also found two copies of Coil's costume in a trunk in his bedroom, along with several guns and burner phones. Sixth, we checked those burner phones and they include calls that we know Coil to have made. Seventh, an examination of Triumph's body revealed that he was killed by a man of Daniel Hebert's height."

"But he's poor." I protested. "Look at the house he was living in. Do you really think someone like Coil would live that bad off? I mean, there's maintaining cover and then there's starving yourself."

The man nodded at that. "I know. That's why I don't think he's the bad guy here."

I opened my mouth, then shut it and frowned. "Huh? You said you still thought he was Coil."

"I do." Armsmaster – it was too hard to think of him as anything else – nodded. "I believe he's Coil, but I don't believe that Coil is the real mastermind here." When I continued to stare in confusion, he went on. "Coil, as... the costumed man that he presents himself to be, only became known in the last year or so. But he came out... fully funded. One day there was no sign of him, and the next day he came out of nowhere, fully funded with a private army with advanced weaponry."

"So... so where did he come from?" I asked.

"That's what I've been asking myself." Armsmaster replied. "So last night, after you left, I had Hebert's accounts run. You're right, he didn't have the money to be Leet, let alone Coil. But there are secondary accounts, accounts that he tried to hide. He was using those accounts to send money into someone with PRT access."

Eyes widening, I asked, "Who?"

"We don't know yet." He sighed. "But it was either a payoff for information, or... something else. Either way, that's not enough to excuse him. It's not enough to write off every other bit of evidence, including the fact that he's disappeared now."

"I... I don't think it's him." I said flatly, staring up at the older man.

He met my gaze for a moment before responding. "Every bit of evidence that we can find says Hebert is the guy." A long breath was taken in and then released very slowly before he spoke again. "But I'm not in the habit of throwing away or ignoring resources."

That made my head tilt. "Resources?"

"Your danger sense." Armsmaster explained. "We don't know exactly how it works. Maybe it's telling you something now. That and, the evidence... could... I suppose... be called too neat."

"Does that mean you believe me?" I asked, hopefully.

"It means that I'm not going to hinder your attempts to look further." He clarified. "It means that if this _is_ a frame job, it's a damn good one, and if we don't look like we're buying it hook, line, and sinker, who knows what else might happen. They, if there **is** a they, might tunnel down so far we never find them."

"So..." I folded my arms, staring at the man.

Armsmaster gave a little smile. It looked strange on his normally gruff face. "So, we'll look like we buy it. Honestly, I still do, mostly. But I'm not going to ignore your hunches either. You look into it however you can. Use the other Wards for resources. We're going to press on, and if you approach me in public, I'm going to lambaste you the way I did at the house yesterday. If.. **IF** there is some other mastermind behind this, they need to think that we—the Protectorate- buy their story. I'm going to convince them I'm ignoring you. But if you get into trouble, real trouble, use this." He extended his hand to me, offering a small bottlecap sized remote with a place for my thumb print on it. "Press this down and hold it tight for four seconds. It'll send an emergency alert to me with your location."

I looked at the remote. "So you sort of believe me."

"I don't entirely not believe you." He answered stiffly. "Let's put it that way."

After a moment of hesitation, I put the remote away in my pocket. "Thank you, sir."

His response was a silent nod, and we continued to look at each other in slightly uncomfortable silence for a few seconds before he pressed on. "You said something about a threat yesterday. Clockblocker and Vista said you were talking about a clone of Panacea."

Slumping a little at the memory, I nodded. "Yes, sir. I... I need some breakfast. Can I talk to you about it over Frosted Flakes?"

"Frosted... Flakes during a debriefing." He echoed, raising his hand to his head briefly as though lamenting where his job had taken. "I suppose."

I grinned then, starting to move past him. "You don't have to be jealous. You can have some too."

"I think I'll pass." He was shaking his head as he moved after me.

"Are you suuuure?" I called back in a sing-song tone. "We have Cocoa Krispies too!"

All that met that was a groan.

I told him everything I knew. I wasn't sure how much he fully believed and how much he thought I was either exaggerating or mistaken about, but he listened and took notes. When I was done, he said he'd have the building looked into, and start running scenarios for how to contain someone like Pandora. He believed she existed, at least, even if the question of how powerful she actually was remained under debate.

He wanted my contact in Coil's organization, and I promised to talk to her and try to get her to come in, but that it wasn't going to be easy. I steadfastly refused any offer of accompaniment, and made him swear not to try to follow. I was never, ever going to forget the look on Armsmaster's face when I forced him to lock pinkies with me while making that oath. It was so worth the scowl afterward.

I took most of the rest of the day, Sunday, off. I'd done enough the night before, and I needed a little rest. Hours were spent lounging in front of the television, trying to ignore the random news alerts about the damage that the explosions had done, as well as the ongoing manhunt for Mr. Hebert, whom the news had somehow picked up as being Coil. Now on top of the authorities, Taylor's dad was going to have a lynch mob hunting him down.

Finally, it was time to go to the computer cafe. I took the bus, which was incredibly crowded from all the people that still needed to get around after the damage that had been done to the city. I was cautious, changing routes three times just in case, after checking my clothes for any kind of tracker. I knew that I'd made Armsmaster swear, but I also wasn't stupid. I even took a trip into a secondhand store that was open and bought a new set of clothes, wearing them out the back.

After another two bus routes, a cab, and a six block jog, I ended up in front of the cafe. Stopping there, I turned in a slow circle, scanning not only the people, but the sky around me. I wanted to make sure no one and nothing had followed me.

Eventually I was as satisfied as I was going to get. I turned and walked into the building. There was a sign on the door stating that half of the proceeds for the next week would be going to assist people who had lost their belongings in the attacks. I moved back to the corner where I had met Marissa after paying for an hour on the machine.

That hour came and went, as did another, and a third. I passed the time by browsing online, but I was almost out of money. Marissa hadn't answered either of my past two attempts to call her.

Giving another glance at the closed door, then around at the paltry few customers who had actually come in that evening, I sighed. Was she coming? Did she change her mind? Was the threat of abandoning Noelle too much? Or... or had something happened to her?

At that thought, I was pulling my phone out for yet another futile attempt at contact. Again, I hit the voicemail, sighing before hanging up. Then I rose up and started to trudge out. It had been three hours. I couldn't wait anymore.

Just as I was passing through the doorway, I ran into another figure. Sliding sideways to slip past, I mumbled, "Sorry."

"Madison?"

I blinked up, refocusing again on the person I had just been about to move past. She wore a brown leather jacket, ratty jeans, and a dark green tee shirt with Winslow High School Athletics printed on it. Her hair was a short pixie cut, and was black instead of blonde. But other than that...

"Mars?" I had to double take. "You... you're..."

"In disguise." She explained, glancing around the store before gesturing over her shoulder. "Let's umm..."

My arms went around Marissa, hugging her so tightly and suddenly that she gave a yelp of surprise. Then I felt her return the hug.

"I was scared." I told her in a whisper. "I thought Coil or... or someone... did something to you."

"Oh Mads." She tightened the hug briefly. "No, I'm sorry. I..." Shifting, her hand tilted my head up to look at her. "Let's take a walk, okay?" At my nod, she released me, sliding her hand down to interlace her fingers with mine before turning to step back outside the cafe.

I followed her, feeling dazed. I had been so frustrated, so worried, that the 180 my feelings were doing now that she was here was giving me whiplash. Keeping my hand on hers was the only thing keeping me moving at that point.

"Why... why are you in disguise?" I finally managed, a block later.

"They found out I was talking to you—to someone with the good guys, I mean." She replied after a moment, squeezing my hand. "One of their guys heard me giving you information about Shadow Stalker over the phone."

Eyes widening, I stopped and kept hold of her hand so that she turned to me. "What?! Oh. Oh god, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have pushed you. I should have waited. I could have-"

Marissa's hand came up, pressing three fingers against my mouth. It sent another... tingle through me. "Shh. It was time. I needed the shove."

"But... but now what?" I asked. "What about your friends? What about Noelle?"

Her head shook. "Luke's being taken care of, and the others... well, I decided where my line was. Yesterday, that was over my line." She shrugged, but I knew it wasn't nearly as simple as she was trying to make it sound to spare me. "So I got out of there. I had to ditch my phone and the car. Then it took a long time to change my look and make my way over here. I... I'm sorry for making you wait."

"It's okay." I replied honestly, glancing down as my thumb absently rubbed over her knuckles. "I'm just glad you're here. And safe. But what are you going to do?"

"I have other identification." She answered softly. "ID that he doesn't know about. And I still have some cash. I'll be okay for now."

"You could... you could come into the PRT." I suggested, blinking when she flinched. "It's okay, Mars. They'll hear you out, especially if I speak up for you and you give them what you know about Coil and his organization."

"It's not that simple, Mads." Marissa said slowly, closing her eyes before opening them to focus on me. She had clearly come to a decision. "There's stuff about me, about where I come from, that you need to know."

We walked, and she began to tell me her story.

**5.05**

"So... you're an alien." I said, about an hour later. Somehow we'd found our way to the grounds of an elementary school, and we were both sitting on the swings.

There was a creak from the chains as Marissa pushed herself back on the swing idly. "I'm not sure. Does being from a different version of the same planet count as being an alien?"

"I'm pretty sure there's laws about transferring anything from your Earth to ours." I planted a pair of lines from either chain on my swing, to the jungle gym nearby, and used them to pull the swing out and up. Yeah, it was an utterly trivial use of my power. Who said desperate, life and death battles against impossible odds are the only thing powers could be used for? "I mean, they go nuts about regulations for importing movies, let alone someone like you." I paused, then added while releasing the tethers so that I swung back. "Like you guys."

Giving a hard kick back to catch up with my swing, Mars chuckled wryly. "Yeah, what do you suppose the import tax would be for seven teenagers?" She paused then. "And would the Simurgh have to pay it?"

"Seven..." I considered what she had said. "There's you, and Trickster..."

"Krouse." She supplied. "Francis Krouse."

"Then there's Genesis, or Jess." I continued with a nod, pumping my legs to swing forward. "And Luke, or Ballistic. Those are the main ones everyone sees. Plus Noelle and Oliver, who each took the... the superpower potion, so the powers got... messed up." I hesitated before finishing. "And Perdition."

"Cody used to be with us." Marissa mused. "I mean, he was never really... that close, after we got here. He was too jealous of Krouse. Too distrustful. But we worked together, until Accord happened." She put her feet down to stop swinging, giving a soft sigh. "If I hadn't barged into the office and interrupted..."

Accord was a supervillain up in Boston, who was, apparently, completely obsessed with everything being run on a perfect, uninterrupted schedule. There had been a crisis and Marissa had run to find Trickster in the middle of his meeting with Accord, causing the anal retentive guy to demand someone to blame.

I shook my head. "If you hadn't gone in, the uhh, Perdition clones would have done even more damage. Then Accord probably would have demanded even more compensation."

Mars was quiet for a long moment before speaking again. "I guess you've got a point."

Letting one of my tethers pull her swing to get her moving again, I kept running my summary. "Speaking of compensation, you guys seriously found powers in a bottle that were worth millions of dollars?"

"Each." She confirmed with a nod.

I let that sink in. "Powers in a bottle. How? Who actually _makes_ superpowers and gives them to people? A really advanced bio-tinker?"

Shaking her head, Marissa gave a shrug. "I wish I knew. I'd burn down everything they own until they tell me how to help Noelle."

"Who only took half a dose of the power formula." I let my head fall back as I continued to swing, gazing up at the stars. "And now she's got some enormous monster body growing out of her, she eats all the time, and when anyone touches her..."

"She puts out an evil clone." Marissa nodded. "That's what happened to Panacea. We were... we were trying to make her heal Noelle, fix what happened to her. Only she didn't have time before the cloning happened, and she passed out."

"She passed out?" I glanced sidelong at the other girl, who nodded. "Did you ever find out why?"

"Probably too much to heal." Sighing, Marissa looked up at the stars as well. "So now you know the truth. Where we came from, why I can't go to the PRT."

"They'll quarantine you." I agreed. "At the very least. You came through from another world, you took millions of dollars worth of some secret formula that I bet **nobody** is supposed to know about, poor Noelle would just make them piss themselves, and on top of everything else, you've done bad things to try to get money to find a cure, and just to feed her, let alone yourselves."

"That pretty much covers it." Mars agreed, kicking at the gravel. "And now I abandoned them. I left them, when we swore we'd stick together. We promised, and I broke it. Now I don't have anything."

I put a tether underneath each of our swings, and another against our backs in order to hold us as far forward and up as possible. That way, we were pretty much lying flat on our backs, gazing up at the sky as I replied, "You've got me."

Waiting until Marissa had turned slightly to look at me, I winked and pulled the lines back gradually so that we swung down again. "Of course, I'm pretty sure that doesn't fully make up for losing a team, friends, the resources of a supervillain..."

"Coil was never going to give us what we wanted." Mars shook her head. "Trust me, Mads, I'd much rather be with you than ten of him."

"How about eleven of him?"

"Not even twelve."

"... thirteen?"

Jumping off her swing, Marissa turned to face mine as I swung toward her. She reached out, catching both chains and holding it up so that I was face to face with her as she leaned forward a little. "You wanna know a secret?"

Something in my chest felt funny, and I couldn't help the tiny giggle that escaped even though I had no clue what I was actually laughing at. It wasn't so much a giggle of humor as it was a giggle of... happiness? "What, another one? What next, are you also secretly Legend?"

"Nah." Releasing my swing, the older girl struck a pose. "But I could totally pull off his costume."

That same squeaky, goofy giggle escaped me before I could stop it. "I—uhh, y-yeah. You could pull off a lot of costumes." I only belatedly realized how else that could be taken, and my face turned red. "I mean, umm..."

I caught sight of Marissa's smile in the light of the moon, before she waved a hand. "Not really the secret I was talking about. No, this is a different secret." Again, she caught the swing and held it. "The secret is... it doesn't matter what number you go up to. You're always going to win over Coil with me, because you actually care about what happens to me."

It took me a moment to respond, swallowing first. "I do. When I was alone in the cafe, and I thought something had happened to you... it was one of the worst feelings I've ever had. It made me feel like... when Taylor died. Like I... like I wasn't going to see you again."

She flinched at that, releasing the swing before catching my hands so that I was pulled off of it and to my feet. "I'm sorry you were scared." She said softly. "I never, ever-"

"Hey! Hey you can't be back here!" A light from a security guard's flashlight found us, as the man came huffing toward us, his keys jangling on his belt. "Hey, you're trespassing, both of you. Now come on, I told the last of you kids that if I had to drag you out again, I was calling the cops."

Flushing, I raised a hand to wave at him, calling. "Sorry! We'll be—eeep!" Marissa was dragging me into a run, while the guard called out for us to wait. Either he took his job entirely too seriously, or he thought we were vandals or looters. Which, considering the damage that had been done to the city, and how distracted the real emergency services were, probably wasn't too crazy of an assumption.

Still, Mars couldn't chance being questioned, so we ran across the slightly damp grass, quickly leaving the poor school security guard behind. As we approached the chainlink fence, I quickened my pace, glancing toward Marissa. "On three." I warned her. "One... two... three-" On the last number, I used lines to boost the two of us up and forward, clear over the fence. We sailed a solid two feet higher than the top of the barrier, the other girl squealing in surprise in spite of my warning.

We came down on the other side of the fence and immediately dropped into the grass, the momentum translating into a series of rolls side over side, nearly carrying us into a stand of trees, until we finally ended up flat on our backs again. We were partially hidden by the tall grass and the bushes at the edge of the chain-link barrier we had just crossed over.

Both of us remained silent as the security guard came huffing and puffing to the fence. His light moved over the trees, then barely touched the top of the bushes that were hiding us. "They... how..." He panted hard. "God... damn kids."

We listened to the sound of his keys jangling as he walked further down the fence line, and then Marissa leaned a little closer to whisper, "I'm sure the police are gonna jump right on his 'teenagers using the swings after hours' complaint. That's gotta be, what, right under armed burglary?"

"Oh it's right up there with, like, biological terrorism." I agreed with a giggle. "One level under." Both of us giggled loud enough that the flashlight swept back our way for a moment, forcing us to hush ourselves.

Once it was clear again, I shifted over to blink at her. "You just made a joke, Mars. A real, honest joke. I mean, yeah, you're also totally turning me into a criminal who runs from security, but you also made a joke. High five."

I could see the other girl's blush as she obediently slapped her hand against mine. "I guess you're influencing me. I mean, all the people who see Tether can talk about is how funny she is, how she talks the whole time she's fighting bad guys."

Flushing a little at that, I shrugged. "It just makes sense to me. I like making people laugh, and I like to fluster and throw off the other guys. So many people try way too hard to make this superhero stuff grim and dark and angsty. Which, don't get me wrong, it can be really terrifying and horrible, like... like Pandora, but we're also _helping people_. And we have friggin SUPERPOWERS. Have some fun with it."

After a moment, I added. "Besides, lots of bad guys deserve to be mocked. I... I guess that's my point. The real bad guys, they want people to be afraid of them. By making fun of them, by making jokes right in front of the people they're trying to terrify, I'm trying to take that power away from them. I'm denying them what they want most of all. Control."

Marissa was gazing at me as we lay there, hidden by the bushes. "And here I thought you were just a chatterbox."

"That too." I admitted, then giggled a little. "But okay, you said that you're making jokes because of me. What about you? How do you think you're influencing me?"

For a moment, the girl from another Earth just stared at me. Then she slowly, deliberately lifted her head to look back toward the schoolyard, where the light from the security guard could be seen bobbing up and down as he trudged back toward his truck. "Seriously?" She asked, pointedly.

I couldn't help but snicker at that. "Okay, point. So you think you're making me do baaaaad things like... swing?"

She nodded rather solemnly. "Of course. I am a supervillain after all. I have to corrupt you to the dark side."

"Well..." I replied slowly. "I guess I'll just have to employ my anti-turning evil defense."

"Anti-Turning Evil-" She managed to get out before I turned over practically on top of the other girl and started to tickle her sides. Instantly, she kicked out, squealing in surprise before the laughter overtook her. The security guard was long gone by that point, so there was no worry of being caught.

"Gonna turn me evil?" I asked while still tickling her.

"N—noooo!" Marissa squirmed, flailing a little as she tried in vain to shield herself.

Grinning, I leaned in closer and repeated. "So that's a no then?"

Laughing even louder, face red, the older girl's head shook rapidly. "St-sto—aaahhh! Stoooop—can't—breathe—can't... need... need—aaaahhhhaaaaa! Pleeeeease, I'm not turning you evil!"

Finally, I relented and let her breathe, remaining in my spot leaning over her. "Well. Maybe you're turning me a little bit evil." I allowed, winking. "After all, tormenting you like that? I really, really enjoyed it."

She was panting, trying to catch her breath as the shudders from the laughter kept running through her. "You—I-I never expected to meet anyone like you out here. Or anywhere." For a moment, it looked like she was going to say, or do, something else. Then she just lifted her hand and brushed a few strands of hair away from my eyes.

"I'm going to help you." I promised, my voice softening. "I promise, Marissa. I don't know how, but I swear we'll get help for Noelle, and... and find a way to fix this."

"You're optimistic." She noted.

"I'm stubborn." I corrected. "But either way, I will find a way to help you."

Our gazes met there, in the darkness, the only illumination coming from a streetlamp on the sidewalk a short distance away. I could only barely make out her expression. In it, I could read trust... hope... and even acceptance.

"I believe you."

**Interlude 5 - PHO**

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►**Topic: Shadow Stalker. In: Boards ► Places ► America ► Brockton Bay Discussion ► Heroes**

**ThatLittleRedHairedGirl** (Original Poster)

Posted on September 2nd, 2010:

Guess what, _**SHADOW STALKER ISN'T SOLO ANYMORE**_

Yup, I get to be the one that breaks the news first. Doubt it all you want, but my inside sources tell me that the dark stalker of shadows is totally joining the Wards. How about that for bumping up street cred? (Of course I mean she bumps up THEIR street cred).

So since she isn't going solo anymore, I figured she deserved a fresh, brand new thread. Anyone want to bet on which Ward Guy falls for the mysterious badass first?

Oh and all you haters please try to keep it down. Not that you're not allowed your opinion, but some of us happen to like the heroes that are willing to do the dirty work. We could do without all the negativity just cuz she scares you. ;)

EDIT: Oh and you can see Stalker's old thread here

**(Showing Page 232 of 232)**

►**SentientYeti**

replied on May 4th, 2011:

Everyone in this thread needs to learn the difference between alleged and convicted. There's way too many rumors going around that the mods should crack down on. Dragging a tragically deceased hero's name through the mud isn't cool, guys.

►**EvenTripster**

replied on May 4th, 2011:

SentientYeti

Dude, seriously? I know you've been obsessed with this girl for years, but come off it. She was evil. She was responsible for an innocent girl's death. Her topic shouldn't even be in this forum anymore, but the mods refuse to move it because that would mean acknowledging what everyone already knows: Shadow Stalker was a villain.

►**Gorilla Manilla**

replied on May 4th, 2011:

EvenTripster

You say that like Yeti's ever gonna change his mind. He's got some massive crush or something. Just let him mourn in peace.

On Topic: I don't think we're ever going to know for sure what happened with Stalker. She's gone now, and nobody's answering any questions. They won't even say why she was on that prison transport. Was she a prisoner, like the Travelers said, or was she a guard? No one's talking.

►**Laramie's Child**

replied on May 4th, 2011:

So whatever happened with that donation fund for the family of that Sophia girl she killed?

My uncle was one of the guards for that transport. He won't say much, but he totally said that she was definitely a prisoner.

►**SentientYeti**

replied on May 5th, 2011:

EvenTripster

And I say again, the only evidence we have that she killed anybody is the word of KNOWN villains. Forgive me if I don't jump to conclusions. Besides, none of the BB Wards on here will even talk about it. Not even Tether, and she posts in practically every BB topic. I even see her reading this thread a lot, but she never posts.

►**Gorilla Manilla**

replied on May 5th, 2011:

Laramie's Child

I think it got moved over to the fundraising and charity forum because it was off topic for the team forum.

EDIT: Yeah, here it is.

SentientYeti

Obvs the Wards were warned not to talk about their ex-teammate.

►**ThatLittleRedHairedGirl** (Original Poster)

replied on May 6th, 2011:

SS hasn't been convicted of anything. I wish people would remember that...

►**HFDMan**

replied on May 6th, 2011:

Red! Haven't seen you in this thread for a long time. We thought the nasty rumors about our dark lady scared you off.

►**ThatLittleRedHairedGirl** (Original Poster)

replied on May 6th, 2011:

HFDMan

Been busy. I lost a close friend of mine recently. She was like a sister to me. :(

►**HFDMan**

replied on May 6th, 2011:

Aww. Sorry to hear that, Red. *hugs* Are you gonna be okay?

►**ThatLittleRedHairedGirl** (Original Poster)

replied on May 6th, 2011:

Yup, going out tonight. ;) Got a plan to feel better.

►**HFDMan**

replied on May 6th, 2011:

Anything fun?

►**Momma Bear** (Global Moderator)

replied on May 6th, 2011:

Please take side discussions to PM. I'm not going to give infractions this time due to the nature of the distraction, but keep on topic.

►**Uncle Pete**

replied on May 15th, 2011

Shadow Stalker could have done something about Hebert before he set off all those bombs...

**End of Page. ****1****-****230****, ****231****, 232**

**Private message from ThatLittleRedHairedGirl **

**ThatLittleRedHairedGirl:** (Received April 23rd, 2011 - Opened April 23rd, 2011)Hi! I was sooo glad when I saw your account get verified. You have no idea how many losers like to pose as capes on here, even if it only takes a couple days to root them out. The mods are really efficient.

**Tether:** (Verified Cape) (Sent April 23rd, 2011) Lots of people like attention they haven't earned.

**ThatLittleRedHairedGirl:** (Received April 24th, 2011 - Opened April 25th, 2011) So true, lol. You're like, the best cape BB has now that Stalker's gone.

**Tether:** (Verified Cape) (Sent April 27th, 2011) I dunno, I'm still new. Too many powerful veteran capes out there.

**ThatLittleRedHairedGirl:** (Received April 27th, 2011 - Opened April 29th, 2011) meh, I bet you could take 'em. ;) You know, I used to talk to Stalker a lot. We... compared notes, if you know what I mean. ;)

**ThatLittleRedHairedGirl:** (Received April 30th, 2011 - Opened May 14th, 2011 ) So what I'm saying is, we could talk too. I've got all the notes I took for Stalker. Since she doesn't need them anymore...

**ThatLittleRedHairedGirl:** (Received May 4th, 2011 - Opened May 14th, 2011) Hey, it's been a couple days, did you get my messages, or is the system messing up again? (lol?) I really just want to help. I can e-mail my notes to you if you want.

**ThatLittleRedHairedGirl:** (Received May 6th, 2011 – Opened May 14th, 2011 ) I know what I have to do now. I have to prove that I can help you. I get it.

**Tether:** (Verified Cape) (Sent May 14th, 2011) You don't have to prove anything. Don't do anything dumb. Respond back ASAP. Let me know you're okay.

►**Topic: PRT Detectives! Boards ► News and Discussion ► PRT News**

►**HizKat (Original Poster) **

Posted on April 20th, 2011:

Looks like the rumors were true. Since Panacea got nabbed, the PRT is setting up a whole new division to focus on defending capes and their families, and on investigating cape related crimes. Will edit this post with more info later.

EDIT: The new division will be headed by an former PRT agent who was injured in the original Nilbog incident. His name is Thomas Calvert. More info here

EDIT THE SECOND: New division will be called Parahuman Crime Investigation and Protective Services, or PCIPS. Thanks to edckdm for the verification.

**(Showing Page 83 of 84)**

►**Ficsy**

Replied on May 13th, 2011:

Okay guys, at this point we're talking in circles. Whether you think the new division serves a point or not, it's here. So let's try to keep the discussion focused on what they can do and what sort of situations they can help with, not whether you want them to exist or not. That ship has sailed.

►**HizKat (Original Poster) **

Replied on May 13th, 2011:

Thank you, Ficsy. Okay, to be on topic, does anyone know any **verified** capes or cape families who have signed up for the PCIPS bodyguard service?

►**edckdm** (Verified PCIPS Agent)

Replied on May 13th, 2011:

I could name at least one here in BB, but I'm not entirely sure whether I'm supposed to or not. Might be a breach of privacy.

Sidenote, anyone have any idea how to have Verified PRT Agent changed to PCIPS Agent next to my name?

►**Momma Bear** (Global Moderator)

Replied on May 13th, 2011:

edckdm

If you send me photo verification of your transfer to the new division, I'll take care of that for you.

►**Hel's Jester**

Replied on May 14th, 2011:

I guess we know what PCIPS will be investigating first...

►**In Quartata**

Replied on May 14th, 2011:

Oh my god... I have no words. How much damage has been done?

►**Momma Bear** (Global Moderator)

Replied on May 14th, 2011:

Your reaction is underestandable, but please take all questions or comments about the ongoing situation in Brockton Bay to this thread

►**Jamie Suncurse**

Replied on May 15th, 2011:

Okay, so... if this is the first really major thing the PCIPS investigates, it could make or break their entire reputation. If they can solve this bombing right away, no one's ever going to question their existence again.

►**Russian Soul**

Replied on May 15th, 2011:

Oh please. The PCIPS won't catch anyone. If they were **at all** effective, the bombing wouldn't have happened in the first place.

►**In Quartata**

Replied on May 15th, 2011:

Little bit harsh, Soul. They're not psychic. Even the best police can't prevent crime before they happen. This isn't that Tom Cruise movie from Aleph.

►**Russian Soul**

Replied on May 15th, 2011:

Doesn't really change the fact that the so-called Investigation Service couldn't catch a cartoon mouse, let alone this mad bomber.

►**Shadu**

Replied on May 15th, 2011:

RussianSoul

Okay, so you're saying the PRT couldn't prevent all this bombing, but you can't even imagine the full picture.

Get this, because it keeps being ignored. In the year that the PRT was established more cape incidents were registered than the years before and after. Trust me, it's not because capes like to fight with the PRT, it's because new agency wanted to prove they were useful. They demonstrate to the public that it's a lot of danger from capes - and woo-hoo! they receive a lot of government funds.

So, this is like, the same play. When they find the psycho bomber, they're gonna say that all this terror could be prevented, if they had more funds. Mark my words. It's the same thing.

**User received an infraction for this post: conspiracy theories serve no purpose in this forum. **

►**Stefanovich**

Replied on May 15th, 2011:

Shadu

Clever theory you've got there. Let me expand it for you. The PCIPS is going to announce that you're the psycho bomber, just trying to throw out false accusations and wild drama to stay in the spotlight.

**User received an infraction for this post: Keep personal attacks off the board.**

►**edckdm** (Verified PCIPS Agent)

Replied on May 15th, 2011:

Ignoring the attacks against my profession... We're trying, guys. The bombs are still going off, but I have it on good authority that the person responsible for the bombs has been brought into custody. Obviously I can't say more than that, but I hope that helps some of the fear. And more info should be leaking soon.

Just not from me. ;)

**End of Page. ****1****-****82****, 83, ****84**

►**Topic: Bombings In The Bay. In: Boards ► Places ► America ► Brockton Bay Discussion **

► **Momma Bear** (Original Poster) (Global Moderator)

Posted on May 14th, 2011:

Please direct your questions, concerns, and comments about the current tragic events in Brockton Bay to this thread, to avoid cluttering up every other part of the forums. Thank you.

**(Showing Page 228 of 228)**

►**In Quartata**

Replied on May 15th, 2011:

Do we know for sure that the Hebert arrest was related to the bombing? Anyone with a PRT or PCIPS or Cape verification confirm?

►**LogicalKismetHater**

Replied on May 15th, 2011:

None of the ones with any real info are going to respond with anything other than 'wait for the press release'. They're smarter than that. No way they're going to risk giving this son of a bitch any excuse in court.

►**FitnessFit**

Replied on May 15th, 2011:

**User has received an infraction for this post, and it has been deleted: Do not advocate bodily harm against anyone, regardless of your emotions. This is your one warning, which your specific circumstances are the only reason I am even giving you. Step out of line once more, and you're gone.**

►**Metallica999**

Replied on May 15th, 2011:

Uhhhhh... Probably shouldn't make statements like that... the mods don't like it.

►**WieldingTheSeven**

Replied on May 15th, 2011:

Uh oh. Mods jumped on it already. What did he say?

►**Metallica999**

Replied on May 15th, 2011:

PM'd you.

Back on topic, is there a charity set up to help with the damages yet? And do we have a rough estimate of how much damage was done?

►**edckdm** (Verified PCIPS Agent)

Replied on May 15th, 2011:

There's a topic listing the charities and other ways that anyone can help here.

The property damage that has been confirmed so far is as follows:

Winslow High School – Total Loss

Saint Augustine's Hospital – Heavy damage, all remaining patients evacuated to Lakes Regional Hospital and Southland General.

Three homes on Rudyard Blvd west of the Boardwalk – Destroyed, heavy damage to six other homes on the street, and the road itself.

The bridge on Forty Third near Vine and Gallop – Destroyed. Use alternate route.

22nd Precinct Police Station on Cheerful and Tuttles – Heavy damage, all officers being directed to either the 23rd or 19th precincts for assignments.

True Smiles Daycare at the end of Sycamore – Total loss. Thank god no one was there this late.

Corner of Dupris and Cheerful – Heavy damage from car bomb done to road and surrounding buildings. Avoid the area until safety crews have cleared it.

East 4th and Ridgeland – Numerous explosions have targeting the police station just north of this corner have heavily damaged the streets here, rendering them unpassable.

Other losses include large areas of the docks and several buildings downtown, but there are conflicting reports about just how much damage was done and where. I will update this post as soon as I find out more for certain. If you have anything to add, PM me.

►**E.S.B. Lion**

Replied on May 15th, 2011:

Dear god... if Hebert really did all this, he's never gonna make it to trial. Someone's going to take him out before they get a chance.

(Please note mods, I am not ADVOCATING this. I'm saying what I think is going to happen)

**End of Page. ****1****-****226****, ****227****, 228**

►**Topic: Tether. In: Boards ► Places ► America ► Brockton Bay Discussion ► Heroes**

►**Groundgrabber** (Original Poster)

Posted on April 11th, 2011

NEW ADDITION AS OF April 23rd, 2011

Tether responds in this thread, guys. She'll answer any questions she can (though not always to satisfaction), and she's asked that if it's been a few days since you asked a question and she hasn't answered, please PM _**ME**_ (Not her) and I'll point her to them. Please keep all rules and good taste in mind before either asking questions here, or pointing them out to me if Tether hasn't responded, because I am not afraid to hit the report button.

EDIT AS OF April 21st, 2011

Okay, now that Tether is a member of the Wards, we have a little more information. Her powers allow her to connect any two non-living objects and then pull those two objects together or push them apart. Other limitations or strengths unknown so far.

ORIGINAL POST BELOW

Looks like Brockton Bay has a brand new cape. Topic title left vague until the name is revealed. (EDIT: Name confirmed to be Tether. Thanks, Vista)

She was seen helping several members of the Wards bring in Lung. Powers currently unknown. Some say flight, some say long jumping, others say telekinesis. (EDIT: Powers mostly confirmed to be a unique form of telekinesis.)

All we know so far is that she isn't a member of the Wards (EDIT: She is now.), but she was definitely involved in bringing Lung to justice, so it looks like we have a solo good guy. Maybe she and Browbeat can team up? (EDIT: Nm, Brow turned evil. :( )

**(Showing Page 146 of 147)**

►**CompletelyRationalSaneGuy **

replied on May 13th, 2011:

Did you SERIOUSLY insult Lung right to his face?

►**Tether **(Verified Cape)

replied on May 13th, 2011:

To be fair, I'd insult his other end, but I'm pretty sure I'd pass out before I got anywhere near it.

►**CompletelyRationalSaneGuy **

replied on May 13th, 2011:

omg I got Tether'd. :D

►**DeviantMime **

replied on May 13th, 2011:

Just how many bullshit tricks can you pull out of your rear from 'connect two objects to each other' into, anyway? You get around like a mover, you affect the environment like a shaker or a blaster, you can hit like a minor brute... what's next, connecting a bunch of objects together like a pseudo-tinker?

►**Bonewalker **

replied on May 13th, 2011:

I bet she could fly if she swapped the line connection from the ground to her suit fast enough.

►**Tinyoh**

replied on May 13th, 2011:

Bonewalker

Nope, she'd have to have mental processing as fast as a computer to do that. No one can think and adjust on the fly that well.

►**Tether **(Verified Cape)

replied on May 13th, 2011:

DeviantMime

*sidesteps away from Kid Win's workbench* Nooooooo. _

Bonewalker & Tinyoh

:( *puts propeller cap and pilot's scarf away*

►**HizKat **

replied on May 13th, 2011:

Aww! See what you guys did? You made Tether sad.

►**TheUltimateLord**

replied on May 13th, 2011:

Don't be sad, Tether. You just need to get a teammate who flies, and then connect yourself to them.

►**Tether **(Verified Cape)

replied on May 13th, 2011:

TheUltimateLord

Good point! *looks away from scowling Aegis to stare intently at half the members of New Wave* Damn flyer-hogging team.

►**Glory Girl **(Verified Cape)

replied on May 13th, 2011:

*shoves Crystal that way*

►**Groundgrabber** (Original Poster)

Replied on May 13th, 2011

Oh wow, a GG post. Can we take that as a hint about Laserdream's future? :D

►**Laserdream **(Verified Cape)

replied on May 13th, 2011:

How did I get dragged into this?

►**Glory Girl **(Verified Cape)

replied on May 14th, 2011:

... Aliens.

**End of Page. ****1****-****145****, 146, ****147**


	6. Arc 6: Prey

**6.01**

A man was being shoved back and forth by a large group of angry, hungry, tired people who had surrounded him in the middle of an old basketball court next to a middle school. The man was a volunteer, and these people were furiously demanding to know where their food and medical supplies were, since the explosions had destroyed most of the routes out of the neighborhood. The guy didn't know much more than they did, but they were frustrated and scared, and things were about to escalate out of hand.

Not that I was going to let that happen.

"Incoming!" I called out while descending toward them. One hand was extended toward the top of the building I had just leapt from, using a line to direct my fall, while using a line attached from my feet to the ground to slow it down.

I landed in the middle of what had very nearly been a mob, next to the poor guy they had almost attacked. "Ooh, is this where we pick up the pitchforks and torches, or is this the line for the lynching ropes?"

"You think what happened out here is a joke?" One man, a large guy with a ruddy complexion who had started the shoving, demanded.

"No, sir." I said promptly. "But neither does this man." I indicated the volunteer next to me, who had shrank into my shadow as soon as I arrived. "That's why he's out here volunteering his time to try to help you get organized."

"Organized, my ass." The man muttered. "We've been waiting all fucking week. Where's our food? Where's our medicine? They're fucking us over, I tell you. They're just waiting for us to... to..." He trailed off, because I was nonchalantly gesturing upward with my thumb. Gradually becoming aware of the large shadow hanging over his head, the man slowly looked up, along with the others in the crowd.

There were several gasps, probably because of my awesome timing and stage presence. Oh, and also because of the large shipping container currently hovering over their heads that I had casually pulled down from the roof where I'd left it, I supposed.

Once the man became aware of the container, I gestured with a few fingers. "Could you scooch a bit? I don't want to say this thing is too heavy, but I'm not _entirely_ sure how long I can keep it stationary like this."

The crowd quickly backed away and let me lower the container. As soon as it was down, I nodded to the volunteer, whose nametag read 'Gary'. "Go ahead, Gary. Start handing stuff out. I'm sure everyone's going to wait patiently in line." I said the latter part with a raised voice. "After all, everybody here has been to kindergarten and learned how to share."

Still, I stood nearby and watched while Gary got to work passing out the supplies, using the time to catch my breath.

It was Wednesday the 18th of May, three days after the bombings had stopped, and there was still no school. Not that there would ever be **that** particular school. Winslow had been utterly demolished. People were already speculating that Mr. Hebert had targeted the high school in particular because of his daughter's death there. Not that they knew the specifics, everyone still thought it was an accident. But they decided that Daniel Hebert blamed the school for it. Funny how people use evidence only 'verified' because of a specific conclusion to justify coming to that conclusion in the first place. Mr. Hebert himself was still at large, with people reporting sightings of him everywhere from right in front of PRT Headquarters to Egypt and anywhere in between.

At the moment, every student in the city had the next two weeks off from school, anyway, while the people in charge worked to clean up the damage and then decide how they were going to divvy up the Winslow kids among the remaining schools.

I already knew where I was going, of course. The PRT had been holding off on having me transferred to Arcadia to avoid blowing my identity, even transferring in a couple others from the the waiting list that sort of fit my general description to muddy the waters about who I was, but now there was no particular reason not to move me in as soon as possible.

Over the last few days, I'd been splitting my time mostly between helping with clean up and rescue (there were a lot of people still trapped or cut off, or just plain in need of food delivery), and with helping Mars move into a 'no questions asked' apartment downtown. She was probably safe considering the sheer odds of anyone who actually knew her face happening to stumble by wherever she went, but the former-Traveler was still staying out of sight for the most part, while we decided what to do.

"Hey, uhh, miss." A voice dragged me back to the present, and I saw the big guy who had been causing problems looking abashedly at me. "I'm sorry. I know I don't need to be making things worse. I'm just... my kid's got the flu and my wife, she was... she was..."

Seeing his expression, I knew what he was trying to say. I shook my head and lifted a hand to his arm. "It's... it's okay." I said quietly, as reassuringly as I could manage in the situation. "Everyone's tempers are blazing, just... just take care of your kid." Trying to make him feel better, I asked, "What's their name?"

"Sam." The man answered. "His name's Sammy. I uhhh, I have a picture." Fumbling in his pocket, the man took out a little wallet sized photograph of what looked like a nine year old brown-haired boy stepping up to bat in Little League.

Smiling a little at the picture, though the expression was hidden, I started to hand it back. The man shook his head. "Keep it. I uhhh, want you to remember that this medicine, this food you're handing out? Even when there's assholes like me causing trouble, Sammy's the kind of kid you're really helping."

He turned and moved back into the line before I could protest, calling over his shoulder. "Ain't gonna be no more problems here, I promise. I'll stick around and make sure nobody else acts like a... like I was."

Holding the picture in my hand for a moment as I gazed at the crowd of people, I slowly put it away and then turned. Extending my hand toward the roof of another building, I let my line pull me away while activating my com with the other hand. "Supplies delivered to Ridgeland, what's next?"

"Head to Southland General Hospital." Aegis's reply came through. "They've got another box of supplies ready to go out to the docks area."

"On it."

Once I reached the crowded hospital, I couldn't find anyone who knew where I should go. The place so busy, so packed full of both patients and harried staff, that even hearing what people were saying took some effort.

A sharp whistle caught my ear, and I turned just in time to see a loaded gurney being rushed right toward me by a group of hustling orderlies. Faced with nowhere else to go to get out of the way, I put a couple lines between myself and the ceiling and let myself be pulled straight up, pressing myself against the tiles there as the gurney was wheeled through the area I had been in. The orderly who had whistled gave me a brief thumbs up.

"Now I see why you wanted a flier." A voice remarked idly from below me. I turned toward the voice while dropping back to the floor.

It was Glory Girl- or Victoria, rather, since she wasn't in costume. She was standing with her sister, Panacea, and another cute blonde that it took me only a second to place as Laserdream, or Crystal.

Man, the members of New Wave were either really brave, or exceedingly stupid to let their identities be completely public. Honestly, part of me was leaning to the latter, particularly where the adults were concerned. It was all fine and dandy for them to decide that they wanted to let people know who they were, to make a point or whatever their reasoning was, but what about the effect on their kids?

Not to mention the way that looking at Amy made me flinch. I wondered if they'd told her about her clone yet. Or if I should mention it. Armsmaster hadn't exactly flat out told me not to say anything to anyone, but the secrecy part was kind of heavily implied.

On the other hand, Panacea kind of deserved to know there was an evil, crazy and twisted version of herself running around throughout this whole mess.

Victoria was talking still. "Crystal thought you were just kidding, but I told her you guys are losing Aegis as soon as his birthday hits, and then you're screwed on fliers."

"Kid Win has his hover board." I pointed out. "And I ummm... get around all right."

"Had." Victoria corrected. "De—ahh, Gallant said that he took it apart." Right, Dean was her boyfriend. "To build something else."

"Well then." I coughed and looked toward her cousin, spreading my arms. "Cryyyystal Pelham, have you been told anything about the _remarkable_ opportunities waiting for you as a member of the Wards?"

"Sorry." The slender blonde shook her head. "I turned eighteen about a month ago. Couldn't join even if I wanted to."

I snapped my fingers. "Nerts." Then I focused on Glory Girl. "Viiictoria..."

The powerful, headstrong heroine shook her head and chuckled. "Sorry, Tether. You're gonna have to poach off someone else's team. Family sticks together. Right, Ames?" She asked while putting an arm around her sister's shoulders.

"Uhh... yeah." Amy Dallon looked just a little... I didn't want to say uncomfortable, but... uncertain, with her sister's arm around her. There was a certain flushed look to her face as she bobbed her head in a nod.

"So umm, do you guys-" I started to ask if they knew where the new supplies were supposed to be picked up, when I was interrupted by a new voice interrupting.

"Excuse me, ahh, ladies?" When I turned, I found a uniformed security guard, looking a bit panicked and out of breath. "We... we need some help."

Crystal, the oldest one there, took a step that way. "What's wrong?"

"It's ummm..." The man shifted from one foot to the other. "It's the top floor. See, they transferred some of the prison inmates here, the ones that weren't too dangerous, who needed medical help. The whole floor was locked off, only authorized staff and the guards they sent allowed."

"What happened?" I asked before anyone else could.

"They stopped responding to the radio." The man explained. "Then I went up there, and it was all... dark. All the power's out up there, and no one responded when I yelled from the doorway. Then I ummm..." His face blanched. "I thought I saw something... or... someone standing in a doorway, staring at me. But then it was like... she melted or something."

Behind my mask, my face turned ashen. Before I could speak, Victoria was already moving for the stairs. "Right, probably a fresh trigger or something. We'll take care of it, just stay out of the way."

"Wait!" I blurted. Crystal stopped in mid-step, having been moving to follow her cousin. She looked back at me questioningly.

"Hey, if you want to sit this one out because you're afraid of the dark or something-" Victoria called over her shoulder.

"No, wait, you have to listen." I put a line against the floor and her clothes, stopping her. "Just hold on. I..." Not wanting to say anything in front of the security guard, I released Victoria and then started to walk fast. "Come on, walk with me. Amy, you too. You need to hear this."

Victoria's eyes were narrowed as the three girls fell into line with me. "What does this have to do with my sister?"

Instead of answering, I activated my com. "Aegis, I think Pandora's at the hospital. You need to send people here and have the place evacuated."

"Evacuated to where?" He blurted. "We already lost Saint Augustine's. Half those patients were evacuated to Southland in the first place."

"Figure it out." I shot back. "Unless you want to give Pandora an all-you-can-eat buffet of sick and helpless people."

He sighed slowly over the com before responding. "I'll put the word out. You're not going after her alone, are you?"

"No." I glanced back to the other three. "I've got Laserdream and Glory Girl with me." I paused then. "And Panacea."

There was a long pause before he spoke. "You know not to put Panacea in danger."

"She deserves to know." I told him, then signed off.

"Okay." Crystal spoke up before either of her clearly confused and annoyed cousins could. "What, exactly, is going on? What's a Pandora, and what does it have to do with Amy?"

I took in a breath and let it out. By that point, we had reached the stairs and started to ascend. I took a moment to gather my thoughts while we walked up the stairs. The two blonde girls could have flown up, but they were obligingly staying with me, giving me the chance to explain. "Pandora... is... she's..."

"Victoria?" Amy's voice interrupted. I turned in confusion, about to say that Pandora wasn't Victoria, only to find that only two of the girls that I'd been walking with were there.

"Where'd she go?" Crystal demanded, staring at the spot next to Amy. "What happened?"

"I don't know!" Amy's head shook in confusion. "She was right here, right behind me. Her hand was on my back. Then we came around that landing, and I didn't feel her hand anymore. I looked back and... and... she was gone."

She was right. Slowly, I gazed around the brightly lit stairwell, which should have been safe. I looked up, then down, finding no sign of anything other than the three of us. There was no sign that Victoria had ever been here, and none of us, not my lines, not Crystal, and not even Amy, who had been standing directly in front of her, had known until it was too late.

Pandora had taken Glory Girl without a sound, and none of us had noticed.

**6.02**

"You have _got _to be kidding." Crystal's words were flat with disbelief.

"She's not." Amy's own voice expressed clearly stunned resignation. "I... don't remember everything, but I've been having dreams. There was a monster, a girl with a monster attached to her, and I was supposed to fix her. I couldn't... can't remember anything else. I thought it was just a dream, but... but it fits what she's saying."

Looking back and forth between us, Crystal's head shook. "Okay, so you're saying there's an... an evil Amy out there with like... the inverse of her powers."

"She can heal herself. Even more, it's like... complete control over her own genetics." I confirmed with a nod. "To scary degrees. And somehow she can duplicate herself. I'm not even sure how that works, except Armsmaster guessed that it has to do with the people she keeps absorbing. He thinks she's adding their mass to her own and then altering and splitting it off into another body." I shrugged. "I haven't seen anything that disproves that."

Amy closed her eyes, giving a shudder. Now I knew why Pandora had seemed so familiar. The brown haired, lightly freckle-faced girl was known to everyone. There were other healers in the world, but none quite as important or capable as Panacea. She was one of the most important people we had in the fights against the Endbringers, since she could heal everything up to actual death.

On the other hand, that had to be a **lot** to live up to, and I doubted many people remembered that she was just one person, despite her power. And now there was an evil, crazy version of her running around killing people. Not to mention kidnapping her sister.

"Well." Crystal straightened and started to continue up the stairs to the top floor. "Then we're just going to have to find her and sort this out." As she walked, the older girl was taking the phone from her pocket. She sent a quick text and then then glanced back. "Tether, you gonna be able to help?"

I gave a short nod. "If it helps at all, my power points me to people who are about to be hurt or... or worse. It didn't go off at all, so I don't think that Pandora wants to hurt Victoria."

"Do you know anything else about... her?" Amy asked, distractedly. Something else was clearly bothering the girl about her clone grabbing her sister, but I wasn't sure how to ask.

I hesitated before nodding while trailing after Crystal. "Just that she said I was useful so she didn't want to hurt me."

That brought both of the girls' attention. Amy stared for a second. "What does that mean? Why would she think you were useful?" Seeming to realize belatedly how that sounded, the mousy girl blanched. "I mean..."

"I know what you mean." I assured her. "What I don't know is what _she_ meant. She didn't exactly stick around to explain herself."

"We'll get answers this time." Crystal—Laserdream, assured us both. We had reached the top landing by that point, and she glanced back to make sure we were ready before gently pushing the door open.

As the guard had said, the whole floor was dark, oppressively so. It looked like every single window-blind had been pulled down, and the absence of any noise, whether from voices, footsteps, or equipment, was unsettling.

For a moment, the three of us simply squinted into the darkness. Crystal spoke softly. "Amy, maybe you better-"

"Do not even say it." Amy's voice was hard. "Vicky's in trouble, and it's me—or a version of me- that took her. I'm going."

I saw Crystal turn to look at her younger cousin, examining her for a moment to see if there was any way to convince her otherwise, and whether it was worth the effort to try. Finally, she let out a breath and stepped from the landing. "Then let's stay together. No splitting up. Tether, let us know the second you get a hit on your danger thing."

Two steps in, and I reached to the small control knob hidden just inside my vest, dialing the brightness of the violet glow from the lines on my costume up. It made it at least slightly easier to see a couple more feet.

"Isn't that just going to make you an easier target?" Crystal asked with a raised eyebrow.

It was Amy who answered for me. "If... she can alter her body, she can already give herself perfect night vision and whatever else. Staying in the dark isn't going to hinder anyone but us."

"What she said." I agreed, nodding that way. "Besides, like I said, she thinks I'm useful for something."

Accepting that with a shrug, Crystal activated some kind of small forcefield a few feet out in front of us. The crimson bubble of energy didn't seem to be very strong from my extremely uneducated opinion, but then, the whole point also seemed to be to make the shield project light so that we could see better, rather than any kind of protection. "Good point."

Slowly, we made our way past the nurse's station. A chair beside the next doorway held the pile of a police uniform and gun belt. The radio lay useless and broken a few feet away, as silent as the rest of the floor. A brief check with my foot revealed that if there had been a flashlight, it was gone now.

Ahead, Laserdream's red forcefield lantern illuminated another two fallen uniforms. Their radios had been openly destroyed as well, the first apparently crushed beneath a foot from the look of it, while the other had been flung hard enough at the wall to scatter the components across several feet of tile. Their flashlights had been taken as well.

"They're gone..." Amy spoke in a hushed tone. "They're just... gone. There's nothing to heal, nothing to fix. They're completely gone."

"That's what she does." I responded, unable to keep the unease out of my own voice. "She absorbs every bit of genetic material and leaves the rest behind."

We made our way methodically further down the hall, checking each room on the way through. Room after room held nothing but empty handcuffs and hospital gowns. With each step, I could sense the unease from the other two growing, while every slight creak or hint of motion in the shadows just beyond our meager light made us jump.

"I just figured out what's missing." Crystal spoke up eventually, the suddenness of her voice making me flinch reflexively. She looked around the hallway and the room we were just leaving, indicating the clothes around us. "Doctor clothes. Scrubs, coats, whatever. There's prisoner clothes and cop clothes and all that, but no doctor or nurse clothes. Why?"

I frowned. "Good question... maybe she's not absorbing them?"

"If that's true," Amy asked. "Then where are they?"

"Fuck this." Crystal finally said after a moment of thought. She cleared her throat and then called out, loud and clear, "Pandora! We don't want to fight you! We just want to know where Victoria is! We are not threatening you!"

Silence met her declaration, and I was starting to think that there really was no one here. Then slow, deliberate creaking noise caught our attention. Crystal's makeshift red light revealed a door that had just opened, darkness lying beyond. Finally, a faint voice, barely recognizable as Glory Girl's, called for help from inside the room.

"That's a big fat nope." I decided, staring at the open, beckoning doorway. "No way, no how, not happening, nuh uh. I've seen this movie, we are not going through that door."

Crystal started to speak, but Amy was already moving past the two of us. She ran ahead down the hall, calling, "Victoria!"

"Amy!" Crystal cursed and looked to me, but the other girl had already moved too far into the shadows for me to grab onto her. We chased her, Crystal lifting off to move faster by flying just under the ceiling.

She was fast, wicked fast, in the air. Laserdream's aerial maneuverability was well known, and she lived up to the expectation by shooting straight down the corridor in the near pitch-darkness, inverting in the air, and putting herself down with barely an inch to spare in front of her cousin, stopping her with both hands.

I caught up a moment later, while Amy was still insisting that Crystal let her go, that she had to find Victoria before her clone did something bad to her.

"Stop, Amy. Stop!" Crystal finally brought her hand up and smacked her younger cousin across the face. "Get a hold of yourself." She ordered. "We're not abandoning Victoria, you know better than that. But we're also not running headlong into traps. You know better than that too. Just because Glory Girl isn't here doesn't mean you have to act like her by charging in blind."

Clearly stunned, Amy held a hand to her cheek. The panic that had been clearly driving her eased out somewhat along with the long breath that she released. "I—I'm sorry." She shook her head. "I just... if she hurts Victoria, and it's... it's sort of... me doing it..."

"She won't." I told her. "My power would have told me if Pandora was going to hurt her." At least, I hoped it would have. I didn't mention the fact that Pandora could always change her mind and hurt Victoria later, even if she hadn't abducted her for that purpose.

After gazing at her younger teammate and family member for a moment to make sure she was in control of herself, Crystal nodded to me. I moved to one side of the doorway, while the other girl gradually moved her forcefield light through and into the room beyond.

The unmasked girl sitting on the bed, illuminated by the crimson glow, was clearly a match for Amy Dallon. She sat cross-legged, watching us with what looked like curiosity. "Hello." Her voice was calm, careful, and maybe a touch indignant. "It took you long enough to come."

"We weren't sure it was safe." Crystal finally managed to say, after she got over her obvious surprise. In spite of my warning, running into a doppleganger of Panacea was clearly throwing her.

To that, the clone's head turned sideways. "You said that you were not a threat."

It was the real Amy who spoke then. "You took Victoria. Where is she? What do you want?"

"What do _you_ want?" The clone returned the question back to Panacea. "You ask questions that you already know the answers to. Wasting time. You should admit why you are truly afraid, what you _really_ fear we are saying to our sister."

"She's not your sister!" Amy shot back, sounding almost livid. "She's mine. You're just a... a copy. You didn't grow up with her. You don't feel about her that w—like I do."

"We wonder..." The clone on the bed mused aloud. "Are you more frightened that our secrets will drive her away, or that they won't, and that all of our fear will have been for nothing? What frightens you more, sister, rejection or all of that lost and lonely time?"

"Amy." Crystal interrupted. "What is she talking about?" But Panacea clamped her lips shut and shook her head, looking even more pale than she had before.

"Where are the doctors?" I had to ask. "Where are all the medical people?"

"Not useless." The girl on the bed replied simply. "Not useless, not a threat, safe."

"You didn't harm them?" I pressed.

"Of course not." Pandora replied. Abruptly, her form shifted into a flock of shrieking bats, which rushed straight at us. Just as my heart leapt into my throat and I jerked reflexively backward, the bats formed back into her human shape, barely half a foot away from me as she continued her sentence. "We are not a monster."

"S-sure." I said, trying to force my heart back down where it belonged, while also doing an internal check to make sure I hadn't actually wet myself. "Not a monster, got it. But where are they?"

She smiled, standing there so close to me that I could see the white of her teeth in the violet light that my suit was giving off. "Safe. Safe and out of the way, so that we can talk, our sister and we." Her head tilted toward me. "You are still useful. Still not ready, but useful."

"Useful for what?" I asked.

"To kill him." Her response came, as simple as it was confusing. "But not yet. Not until we're sure."

"Kill who?" I thought, then added, "Coil? The man who cloned you?"

She just smiled at me once more, not speaking again.

"Please." Amy's voice was pleading. "Please tell us where Victoria is. Why did you take her?"

"We missed her." Pandora's voice actually sounded... sad. "We missed our Victoria."

Amy hissed at that, clearly angry and defensive. "She isn't yours."

Rather than arguing the point, the clone simply said, "We wish to make a trade."

It was Crystal who spoke then. "What trade?"

Regarding her briefly, Pandora answered. "A trade for healing. We cannot heal others, our sister can." She looked toward Amy. "An agreement. You will heal the one we wish you to heal, sister, and then we will give Victoria to you. Both will be safe."

"Is that why you came to the hospital?" I asked. "To look for a doctor? Is that where the other medical people are?"

"Useless." She replied derisively. "Can't fix her. Can't take her pain away."

"Fine." Amy's voice was a little shaky, but steady. "A trade. I'll heal your... whatever she is, and you'll give Victoria back."

"And the doctors and nurses." I added. "All of them. And no more killing people in the hospital. It should be a safe place, Pandora. You can't just... you can't just kill everyone who gets in your way."

She gave me a blank look at that. "Do you know of one that we are incapable of killing?"

My mouth opened, then shut. "That's not what I meant. I-" Shaking that off, I waved a hand. "Just don't kill anybody else in here, please, Pandora. Call this a truce, a safe place. I'm not demanding, I'm asking. Please, don't kill anyone in the hospital. This is where people get healed."

For a moment, the clone met my gaze. I wasn't sure if she fully understood me or not, but eventually, she gave a sight nod. "We will not kill within the hospital."

"And you'll let Victoria and the others go." Crystal prodded.

"After the healing." Pandora acknowledged. "And you will let us go with our friend. You will not take her or stop us, or our... truce is forfeited."

"Agreed." Crystal finally said with a sigh, glancing toward Amy and me until we nodded.

Satisfied, Pandora turned to that dark mist, floating past the three of us to reach the hallway once more, before turning to walk. Uneasy looks were passed around, before we started to follow.

Three doors down, the clone touched a door and pushed it open. "Inside."

As instructed, we went through the doorway and into a room that had been lit by several of the flashlights that had been taken from the police uniforms. Victoria stood in a corner of the room with her fists clenched, anger and frustration clear on her face. When she saw us, she started a bit. "Crystal, Amy! It's—it's you. It's..."

"We know." Crystal told her. "It's all right. We made a deal."

"Yes." Another Pandora, who had been hidden by the shadows of the room, stepped into view. She, and the one that had been with us and was now in the doorway, spoke together. "We made a deal."

It was only then that I noticed that the bed was moving, shaking a bit. Something—or someone, was bundled up under the blankets. "Who...?" I started to ask.

In answer, the Pandora in the room walked to the bed and drew the blankets back. The flashlights revealed a figure that I knew well, even in the dim light.

"Dinah." I gasped. "Dinah Alcott." I'd known that she wasn't dead. Marissa had told me that much, and I'd passed the information along to Armsmaster. But to see her like this... the girl was pale, shaking with pain and misery, and when the blankets were removed, she made a terrible moaning noise.

"Drugs." Pandora informed us, looking toward her original self. "You will heal her. You will remove her pain."

"You can't leave with her." Victoria growled. "You're a monster, not my sister, and you're not taking that kid."

"We have a truce." The Pandora by the door announced. "An agreement. If you do not honor your side, we will not honor ours." Her gaze found mine. "And if we do not honor our agreement..."

I swallowed, getting the point. "You'll go back to killing."

"It is your decision." The Pandora next to the bed informed us with a nod of agreement to my words.

Her other self, by the door, agreed. "Your choice. Heal the girl and allow us to leave with her."

"Or," The one by the bed continued. "No one will leave this hospital."

"No one." They both finished together.

**6.03**

"What the hell do you mean, an agreement?" Victoria demanded. "You can't make an agreement to just _let_ a kidnapper keep the kid. Did you guys just **forget** that we're supposed to be heroes, as in 'the good guys'?"

"Then there is no conflict." The Pandora by the bed announced.

The Pandora by the door nodded. "Because we are not Dinah Alcott's kidnapper."

"We are her friend." They both said together.

"And you will help her." The one by the bed said firmly to Panacea. "You promised that you would help our friend."

Crystal gave a short nod. "Of course, she's going to help Dinah. Victoria, come here, we'll talk."

"Talk about what?" Victoria grumbled under her breath as she moved that way reluctantly. "About how we're totally making deals with the bad guys now?"

"I ummm..." Amy spoke up hesitantly. "I'll do what I can for her. If she was on drugs, then she'll probably still have some psychological dependency. I can't fix that, but it should get better in time. I can help with the physical symptoms."

While she stepped that way and laid her hand against Dinah's cheek, I spoke up to get the Pandora by the door's attention. "I'm going to use my radio now." The last thing I wanted was for her to think I was breaking the deal somehow. "Just to let everyone else about our deal, so no one does anything bad."

She gave no response to that, which I was taking as tacit agreement. Reaching up to activate the com, I spoke. "Aegis, are you there?"

"Talk to me, Tether." It wasn't Aegis, it was Armsmaster. "Do you have the clone in sight?"

"You uhhh," I coughed. "You could say that. Listen, don't evacuate the hospital. You don't need to get anyone out."

There was a pause, and when Armsmaster spoke again, his voice was suspicious. "Stranger protocol. What did you have for dinner when I met you at your house?"

"Trick question." I replied. "It was lunch time, but I had cereal. Frosted Flakes. And chocolate milk. I tried to offer you some, but you were being all-"

"That's good enough." The older man interrupted. I could sense the scowl on his face. "Now explain why you suddenly don't want us to evacuate the hospital."

"We made a deal with Pandora." I said slowly. "She's not going to kill anyone else here in the hospital." Pausing as it occurred to me, I added, "Which I think, technically, makes the hospital the safest place in the city right now."

Silence reigned for a few seconds before he spoke again. "Would you care to explain what _kind_ of deal you made?"

I hesitated. There was no way this was going to come off in a good light. "She umm... she has... a friend."

"A friend?" His reply was a mixture of confusion and suspicion. "Tether, if you don't start making sense, I'm going to assume the stranger protocol was broken somehow."

"She has a friend with her." I said again, more firmly that time. "Dinah Alcott. She has Dinah Alcott. She brought her to the hospital to help her, so Panacea is helping her. Then... they're going to leave."

There was another pause, and then Armsmaster replied, "Are you saying that you made a deal to allow Pandora to take the Alcott girl after Panacea heals her, in exchange for her not killing anyone else in the hospital?"

I cringed, hesitating before confirming nervously. "That's... pretty much the gist of it, yes."

"Understood." He replied, unexpectedly accepting of that. I'd expected an argument, but he just asked, "Do you need anyone else up there?"

Blinking, I shook my head. "I don't think bringing anyone else into this is going to help. It'll probably just complicate things, sir."

"We'll need a full report once you're done." Came his response. "If you do need help, or if anything goes wrong, and I mean anything, use your comm and say 'SOS'. We'll be right on top of you inside of sixty seconds. We're right downstairs."

I signed off, letting out a breath before looking to the Pandora by the door once more. The other one was focused on what Panacea was doing with Dinah, while Crystal and Victoria were having a heated argument in the corner. "I need to ask you something."

Her head inclined a bit, expectantly, so I went on. "Coil. He's your enemy, isn't he? The one that you want me to help you with, somehow?"

"It is not time for that." Pandora replied dismissively. "You are not ready, we are not prepared."

"But-" I blurted. "What makes you think I can help you with him?"

The clone seemed to consider that, going silent for several moments before speaking up again. "The enemy has become obsessed with the idea that your power may counter his own somehow. We wish to more fully understand how this possibility may develop and be used against him properly."

I started to shake my head. "I don't understand how my power could possib-" Something occurred to me, and I gave a little start. "Wait, didn't you say that you thought I was useful back when I first saw you?"

"No." Pandora's head shook. "We did not speak when we were first seen by you. We waved, because Dinah has said that we can sometimes be... unsettling, so we were attempting to express... friendship." While I stared, she offered a smile that was clearly supposed to be reassuring, but came off as more predatory.

"Ummm... right." I nodded, swallowing back the shiver that ran through me at that look, not to mention the fact that something—some**one**, I firmly corrected myself, like Pandora wanted me to see her as a friend. "Sorry, I meant the first time we actually spoke. You said you thought I was useful."

"Yes." She finally stopped smiling, the change in expression just as abrupt and seemingly unconnected to her actual mood as the initial smile had been. "You know this already. What is your question?"

I was thinking quickly, trying to figure out the timing of that. "But that happened in the apartment building, _before_ we found Bakuda, and _before_ she named Taylor's dad as being Coil, which was obviously _before_ we went to the Hebert house, so... so..." My eyes were widening behind the mask. "So there's no way that Mr. Hebert could be Coil. Because he_triggered_ when the Protectorate was confronting him. He triggered then, which means he couldn't have had powers before then. But you said I was useful earlier than that, because the Coil you knew **already** had powers."

Though my excitement had been mounting throughout that, the Pandora clone just continued to stare with something like curiosity on her face. I still wasn't sure how much she understood. That was all right, I was just ecstatic that I had another piece of evidence that Coil wasn't really Mr. Hebert.

I was still trying to decide how, or even if, I could use that, when Amy straightened from Dinah's side. "I've done everything I can." She declared, looking toward the Pandora that was standing on the other side of the bed. "She'll have to catch up on sleep, and like I said, she's still going to think she wants the drugs. But the physical symptoms should be better."

The Pandora by the bed moved to use two fingers to brush the hair away from Dinah's still sweaty face in a gesture that was surprisingly tender. "We thank you for helping our friend."

"Good." Crystal shot Victoria a firm look that said 'don't say a word', then focused on one of the Pandoras. "I want to add something to the deal."

Both of the clones looked to one another, then toward Crystal. Their voices were flat with warning. "You will not break the truce."

"No." Crystal shook her head quickly. "No, we won't break the truce. We won't stop you from taking Dinah. That's not what this is about. But there's going to be people who try to take her away from you, people who didn't make the same deal. We can try to stop them, try to make them leave you alone. But if we do, that's more than just this one truce, do you understand? So we need a longer deal."

The Pandora by the door spoke, as the other one remained focused on the sleeping girl. "You will offer us another truce?"

"A longer one." Crystal confirmed. "But first I want to ask you something. There's been a lot of gang members that have just... disappeared. The gangs think there's some vigilante taking them away. Hell, some of them have actually gone straight to the police and **begged** to be arrested because it's safer in prison than on the streets. Is that you? Are you the one killing the gang members?"

"They are useless." The Pandora that was sitting protectively next to Dinah nodded. "They are unproductive, and do harm to others. I remove them."

Letting out a breath, Crystal glanced to me first, then continued. "Okay, but you've hurt other people too. You've killed people, like the police here, when you were looking for doctors. That has to stop. Please. I want you to agree not to kill any other innocents. No killing heroes, no killing cops, no killing civilians. As long as we don't try to hurt you, or take Dinah away, you stop killing anyone who isn't... who isn't a bad guy."

For a long moment, both clones simply stared at her, seeming to process that. Finally, each nodded. "Acceptable." They said together, before the one by the door elaborated. "As long as those who call themselves the heroes within this city do not present themselves as a threat, we will refrain from killing any who would not be classified as... bad."

"Pinky swear?" I offered, unthinkingly.

It was mostly a joke, but the Pandora by the bed was looking at me with obvious interest. "What is this swearing for pink?"

"No, no." I shook my head, internally asking myself what the hell I was doing, before stepping that way. Lifting my hand and extending my pinky, I gestured. "Do this."

The clone stared, then looked down at her hand and finally lifted it to duplicate what I was doing. "If you attempt to deceive us..."

"I'm not." I promised, reaching a hand out to hook our pinkies together. "This is a pinky swear. It's... like an oath. It's a special deal, that can't be broken. We promise we won't try to take Dinah away, and you promise that you won't kill anyone that's... good. Or neutral. No killing civilians, Pandora."

The girl by the bed, so identical in so many ways to Panacea, yet so different, gazed at our joined pinkies with a curious expression, before nodding. "We will not kill those we have promised not to kill, as long as they do not attempt to take our friend away." She gave our hands another curious look, then added, "Pinky swear."

"This is so fucking weird." Victoria declared from the other side of the room.

That much settled, we stepped out of the way and watched as one of the Pandoras picked up Dinah from the bed. She walked out of the room with the girl, while the other Pandora watched us carefully.

Once the first pair was gone, I blurted, "Why do you want to kill Coil? I mean, he sort of... helped create you, in a way. Why do you want him dead?"

She just looked at me for a moment before responding. "He wishes to enslave us, to use our power, our life, for his own ends. We are not a slave, we are a person. We will make our choices, not him."

I opened my mouth and then shut it, but before I could settle on something to say, she was gone, leaving the rest of us alone.

"Did we really just do that?" Victoria demanded. "Did we really let a psycho-bitch like that just walk out with her hostage?"

"It's complicated, Vicky." Amy's voice was quiet."It's not that simple."

"She's crazy!" The other girl shot back. "You wanna know how crazy she is? She said she was in _love_ with me. In love with me! Do you have any idea how... how _creepy_ that was? Hearing someone that looked just like you, just like my sister, saying she was in love with me?" Victoria gave a full body shudder, as if it was the worst, most wrong thing she had ever heard. "So disgusting."

For just a second, I thought that Amy looked as though she'd been punched in the gut. Her whole form clutched over a bit, her face turned white, and she cringed like Victoria had slapped her.

The other girl didn't notice. "I mean seriously, what are we going to tell people? Oh, we let the psychopath clone run off with an innocent little girl, but it's okay because she made a pinky-swear?"

"That's enough, Victoria." Crystal shot her blonde cousin a glare before turning her attention to her other cousin. "Amy-"

The brown-haired girl wasn't listening. She turned to rush for the door, and I could see the tears that she was failing to hold back. "I—I'll tell everyone it's okay to come up." She blurted her excuse for fleeing, and all but ran from the room.

Victoria was at least not oblivious enough to miss that entirely. "I should go after her. Seeing an evil, crazy version of herself... that's gotta be rough."

"Don't." Crystal warned her. "Just give her some time alone to... think." I met her gaze briefly, and the other girl gave me a slight nod of acknowledgment, before speaking. "We do need to figure out what we're going to say to everyone else."

"We did the best we could?" I offered with a wince.

"One thing I don't get." Victoria said with a sigh. "This clone, she's been killing policemen, she kidnapped that innocent girl, but... but she wanted the real Amy to _heal_ the girl, and... and she just agreed not to kill so much, just so that we wouldn't take the girl away from her. So which is it? Is she a good guy, or a bad guy?"

"I'm pretty sure..." I said slowly. "That's about to be a very important question."

"And that's umm, that's pretty much the gist of it." I finally concluded a couple of hours later.

Amy, Crystal, Victoria, and I sat on one side of a massive room that was clearly meant to debrief dozens if not hundreds of troops, having given our story about what had happened in the hospital. Meanwhile, a short distance away and on a raised and rather intimidating stage, an intimidating group stood and listened to our every word. From left to right, there was Amy and Victoria's mother and father Brandish and Flashbang, Crystal's mother and father Lady Photon and Manpower, Director Piggot (who had retained her control of the local PRT in general), Armsmaster, and Miss Militia.

Additionally, in the corner of the room, another figure stood. She was known as Dragon, one of, if not the best tinker in the world. She was responsible for the Bird Cage, for the containment foam that the PRT used, along with a dozen other advantages. At the moment, she wore a set of power armor that had clearly been designed solely for speed, since it was actually vaguely human-shaped and sized unlike other versions of her armor that I had seen her use in videos taken of Endbringer attacks. So far, she had been silent, letting the locals talk.

We were in the PRT building, rather than the Protectorate HQ, because it had been closer, and because Director Piggot had insisted that we include her and that all of the heroes coming to her headquarters was easier than her going to the Protectorate base floating over the water in the bay.

Piggot was the one who spoke first once we had finished. "Do you have any idea how irresponsibly idiotic you've behaved? Telling the Protectorate to stand down when the threat was in a single, contained location and could easily have been surrounded? We knew her location, and had the team on site. We might not get a better shot at ending the threat she presents. Everyone else she kills after this is on your heads."

Armsmaster spoke up gruffly. "I'm not in the habit of letting a rookie Ward _tell_ me to do a damn thing, Director. Tether presented the situation and I made the judgment call. You have a problem with that, you yell at me."

The squat woman gave him a withering stare. "Stop picking hairs, you know what I mean. They were on site and they_somehow_ decided that letting the clone run free to kill more people was the right course of action. On top of that, they let her go with the mayor's niece! He's already lost his son this week. Do you want to tell him that we nearly had his niece but we let her be taken by a threat that could very well result in another Nilbog containment situation!?"

Her words made me flinch. The mayor's son had been Triumph, the recently graduated Ward who had supposedly been killed by Mr. Hebert at the man's house. As for the rest of it, the idea that our town might have to be evacuated, permanently, and some kind of containment wall built around it to keep Pandora trapped within had obviously occurred to me, even if I had tried to dismiss the worry.

"She isn't Nilbog." I spoke up, interrupting what was turning into an argument between the two.

Miss Militia, seeming somewhat grateful for the interruption, lifted a hand for Armsmaster to wait. "What do you mean?"

"Well, first of all, Nilbog took over his entire city. She isn't doing that."

"Yet." Brandish said firmly with folded arms. "Are you suggesting we wait until she starts? How many blocks should we let her have before we abandon the city?"

"No one's abandoning the city." Armsmaster said through gritted teeth, his voice fierce.

"Oh, I was speaking rhetorically." Brandish shot back, just as heated. "Of course we're not abandoning the city, unless stupid decisions keep getting made that let threats that almost kill Amy and my daughter run free!"

Amy... and my daughter. Huh. I snuck a glance toward where the two girls sat. Victoria was on the edge of her seat, frowning as she nodded along with her mother's argument. Amy had been silent, barely talking at all save for when she had to. Her hair covered most of her face, and she sat hunched over, looking rather miserable. The adults clearly thought she was traumatized from seeing her clone. I knew it was more than that.

Brandish and Piggot were still arguing loudly with Armsmaster, while the others mostly looked uncertain.

A loud whistle interrupted everything. I glanced sidelong to see that Crystal had stood up, her fingers just leaving her mouth. "Listen!" She said firmly. "This isn't the Nilbog incident because Pandora isn't _trying_ to take over the city. Think about it for half a second, would you? According to Tether, she can literally absorb a person in a few seconds. Hell, there were dozens of mercenaries inside that building that she saw Pandora in first, we know that from all the equipment left behind. Dozens. And how many Pandora clones did we see? We saw two. She-" Her hand gestured at me. "Saw three of them after Ballistic killed one, when she was pissed off! We know she's been absorbing even more gang members, dozens just that we know of. Yet we never see more than a couple Pandoras. If she had any intention of flooding this city with her duplicates the way that Nilbog took over his city with his creations, **she would have done it already**. The question shouldn't be how long is it going to be before she destroys everything, it should be, 'why isn't she destroying everything, and how can we use that to reach her'!"

For a moment, the sound of a pin dropping would have been deafening. Then Lady Photon, Crystal's mother, spoke. "My daughter has a point." She ignored the look that her sister, Brandish, sent her.

Manpower, his seven foot form dwarfing everything in the room save for possibly Dragon's suit, nodded. "We need to know what this... creature's intentions are."

"She's not a creature." I said, speaking up again in spite of my internal warning to keep quiet. "She's a person. That's her entire point. Yeah, she may be dangerous and she may be ready to kill at the drop of a hat, but she's still a person."

"She's a clone." Piggot corrected, somehow managing not to set me on fire with her glare. I had the tiniest suspicion that the PRT director still held a grudge against me for losing command of the Wards.

"A clone who made a deal not to kill good people." I shot back, not intimidated by the woman in spite of her efforts. "A clone who stopped and listened to reason, even if we had to adjust what we were saying so that she could understand it. It's not that she's evil, Director, it's that she doesn't _understand morals_. She doesn't know any better. It doesn't mean she's incapable of learning."

"She is a monster." Brandish snarled the words. "She could have killed-"

"But she didn't!" I interrupted, feeling frustrated. "She could have killed all of us. Trust me, it would have been easy for her. But she didn't! She came to us for help, help for her _friend_! She wanted to help Dinah, because she cares about her! Does that sound irrevocably evil to you?"

It was Piggot who shook her head next, stubbornly. "The creature is a clone, an artificial creation. It doesn't have feelings, it doesn't have thoughts, it has whatever was programmed into it. Nothing more. It's not real, and it certainly can't have**friends**."

From the corner of my eye, I thought I saw Dragon shift marginally. Before I could wonder if she was actually going to say something, Armsmaster spoke first. "Really? Because as far as I'm aware, our feelings and emotions are the product of millions of years of evolution sending neural signals through our brains. They are the result of biological 'programming'. I don't see anything all that different with an artificial creation. Anything sufficiently advanced would be fairly indistinguishable from human once a certain level of sophistication was reached."

Dragon seemed to settle back once more, regarding Armsmaster. Apparently he'd said everything she might have, because the tinker remained silent.

Flashbang spoke up then. "What about the Alcott girl? We can't just let the crea—this... Pandora... keep her indefinitely.

"She won't." Miss Militia assured him. "But at the time, it was the best solution. It maintains the peace with Pandora while we try to work out other solutions. Such as, for example, finding the parahuman who _created_ her to begin with. Maybe an examination of this... what did you call her?" She asked me.

"Noelle." I shifted uncertainly. There were certain parts of the story I hadn't told, such as the fact that they had come from another world. It was a really fine balancing act, and I was afraid at some point I was going to say the wrong thing and fall right off it.

"Yes, Noelle." The Protectorate second-in-command gave a short nod. "If we can find this Noelle and give her enough of an examination, we might find out how to deal with Pandora, if negotiating with her doesn't work. Either way, whether the future solution comes from negotiation or knowledge gained from examination of the original creator, delaying conflict and buying time was the right call."

"I'll start working on a solution to the rapid cloning problem, a way to contain her-" Armsmaster spoke up over the objection that I started to raise. "-in case it becomes necessary." He looked toward the other tinker in her suit. "I'd appreciate any help or suggestions you could add. The containment foam and the Bird Cage both ahhh, prove you have some kind of specialty in holding parahumans who don't want to be held."

The woman in the power armor bowed her head slightly. Her voice came through the suit's speaker, sounding rather pleased. "Of course. I would enjoy working with you."

"Fine." Piggot didn't look happy, but there wasn't much she could say about it. "You... capes figure out what to do about the creature. The mayor won't be happy about this. He wants his niece back." She stalked to the exit, letting the door slam after her to express her dislike of the situation.

"I'm confused." I whispered to Crystal while leaning in her direction. "Does she like this plan or not? Because she was way too subtle about the whole thing."

The older girl bit her lip, but I saw the smirk before she banished it.

"If that's all then..." Brandish turned to walk to the door along with her husband. As they walked, Flashbang looked back toward the girls. "Amy, Vicky, let's go."

"Actually," Victoria straightened. "We're going out." At their parents confused looks, the blonde girl nodded over her shoulder. "Amy needs some shopping therapy. To cope with everything." She gave them a broad smile. "Having an evil clone is a lot to cope with, you know? Dean's meeting us at the mall."

I didn't really think that shopping sounded like something that _Amy_ wanted to do, but I said nothing. After a moment, Brandish came to hug Victoria one last time. Flashbang started to do the same for Amy, but the healer pushed herself out of her chair and moved to the door before he could, mumbling something about going to the restroom.

"You can leave too, Tether." Miss Militia said to me, once it became clear that Armsmaster and Dragon were deeply involved with their discussion about possible containment procedures. I hesitated, then nodded and started out of the room.

Looking up and down the hall, I found the labeled restrooms and walked that way. Amy was at the sinks when I stepped into the ladies room. She had filled her hands with water and was washing her face with them, clearly wiping away red eyes. A quick glance was sent my way before the girl turned away and grabbed some paper towels. "Sorry." Her voice was a little hoarse. "I'll get out of your way."

After biting my lip in indecision for just a second, I pushed away from the door and walked that way. Before Amy could object, I wrapped my arms around her and gave the girl a tight hug that made her squeak in surprise. "Thank you." I told her. "For healing Dinah, and for... for not completely losing it over Pandora."

She was stiff at first, but after a moment Amy returned the hug just a little bit. I heard the slightest sniffle before she drew back, coughing a little and looking rather flushed. She was staring at my feet, rather than at me, like she was ashamed. I was pretty sure why she felt that way, but there wasn't much I could say directly without making her feel worse.

When Amy spoke, her voice was a whisper. "I—I am... losing it."

"Not that much." I assured her. "If I found out I had a clone, I'd still be standing there going buuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhh?" I made a droning noise, tilting my head sideways like a broken robot.

Clearly in spite of herself, Amy made the smallest giggle noise that I'd ever heard. It was barely a reaction, but at least it was something.

Again, I stepped in and hugged her. This time the return hug was quicker, though her voice was tinted by confusion. "What... what's that for?"

I shrugged. "Who says it has to be for anything? Sometimes you hug someone because you like them."

"You don't even know me." Amy pointed out, sounding resigned. I had the feeling that pretty much no one knew the real Amy. Victoria was clearly the closest friend she had, and well... even she missed very important things.

"True." I nodded in agreement. "But I'd like to."

"Good!" A voice by the door announced. The two of us turned quickly to find Victoria there. "Then you won't mind coming to the mall with us."

"The... mall?" I asked, blankly.

"Yup!" Victoria bobbed her head in a nod, passing me to hug Amy. "Way too much drama, time for fun."

"That is, if you want to come." Crystal, at the doorway, spoke up. "If it's about keeping your identity secret from us still, you could wear a Halloween mask." Her mouth turned up in a tiny, teasing smirk. "I'm sure that won't look too crazy."

I shook my head. "No, no, I just... don't want to interrupt or... intrude."

"Well you're invited." Victoria pointed out, her arm still around the rather uncomfortable Amy. "So you're not intruding."

Hesitating a little, I finally nodded. "Okay... you guys mind if Vista comes? We were supposed to train today."

"The more the merrier." Victoria announced, squeezing Amy against herself protectively and sending another tortured look through the other girl's face.

"It's settled then." Crystal said firmly. "Just a fun trip to the mall. No talk about clones or monsters or powers or evil masterminds. Just... fun."

"Fun." Victoria agreed enthusiastically.

"Fun." Amy mumbled, mostly gazing at the floor.

I looked between the three New Wave members, then shrugged and reached up to remove my hood and mask. "Okay then... let's have fun."

**6.05**

"Seriously, Missy, you have got to wear powder blue more often." Victoria was exclaiming to the youngest Ward as she held an admittedly pretty blouse up in front of the girl. "You've got just the right shade of blonde hair to go with it."

As adept as she was on the battlefield, Missy looked flatly uncomfortable at the moment. When Victoria turned to grab a slightly smaller size, my thirteen year old drill instructor shot me a squint that promised hours of exercise for getting her into this before shaking her head. "I don't really need anyth-"

Her protest was cut off by Victoria pushing the smaller blouse, along with a matching skirt into her arms. "Here, go right in there and change. Let's at least see what they look like. Trust me, you're already pretty, and you're going to be gorgeous. And you work hard all the time, so why not indulge just a little bit in being a girl?"

Missy's mouth opened and shut, and she gave me a brief 'save me' look. All I could do was shrug and lift the bag of clothes in my left hand, demonstrating that I had no power to resist Victoria's enthusiastic shopping insistence either. The younger girl sighed and then turned to go into the dressing room.

While she was gone, I glanced across the store to the shoe section where Dean and Amy were. Neither were really looking at the selection. Dean was talking, while Amy gazed uninterestedly at a pair of dark red boots.

"I'm pretty sure he knows how she feels." Crystal's voice spoke softly from over my right shoulder. I turned to see the older girl watching the pair as well. Another glance showed that Victoria had wandered off to the belt section.

"He... does?" I asked, slowly. I knew that Dean could sense emotions, but hadn't been sure how much it picked up, or the nuances of it.

Nodding, Crystal sighed softly. "I don't think he's told anyone though. Definitely not Victoria. He's not even talking about_that_ right now. He'd rather let Amy think that he doesn't know. But he's still the kind of guy that wants to make people feel better, even if he can't acknowledge why they're upset in the first place."

"Does anyone else know?" I asked, with a glance toward Victoria as the other girl picked rapidly through the belt selection, taking some and discarding others with a certainty born from years of practice.

"Not that I know of." Crystal shook her head. "Dean knows because of his power, I just figured it out today, which made a lot of earlier confusion make more sense, and you..." She glanced to me questioningly.

"It was news to me today too." I confirmed. Then I hesitated before adding, "I didn't know Amy was adopted." It was the only thing that made sense, of course, knowing Amy's obvious feelings for her 'sister'. Not to mention the clear difference in her appearance compared to everyone else in her family.

Crystal shrugged at that. "It wasn't really a secret. Just not openly public."

Yet Amy had powers as well. I wondered how that had come about. Were either of her real parents heroes who had died? I tried to think back to remember if any of the fallen heroes that I knew had powers that could have fit the basic mold of what Panacea could do.

"Don't say anything, okay?" Crystal sighed a little. "I need to talk to Amy, at some point, but I don't know how to bring it up without making her panic and pull away even more."

"Someone should definitely talk to her." I agreed. "Even if it is uncomfortable. Because as tightly wound as she is about it... something's gonna snap."

The other girl nodded slowly, but before she could speak again, the dressing room door opened and Vista came out. She had changed into the powder blue blouse and white skirt, and stood there looking even more uncomfortable than she had before.

"See?!" Victoria exclaimed with clear excitement and enthusiasm. "You look perfect. We just need matching... hmmm... sandals. Yes, definitely sandals. White ones." Missy started to protest, but before she could, Victoria turned toward her boyfriend and sister. "Dean, Amy! Come here and look at this. I am a genius. Wait, bring those sandals. Those ones, no the ones to your left—yeah, bring those."

Stooping after taking the shoes from her sister when the pair approached, Victoria exchanged Missy's shoes with them, before straightening. She stood back and gestured proudly. "See? What did I tell you? Doesn't she look gorgeous, Dean?"

The boy flashed another one of those heart-melting smiles that he was so good at, and nodded. "You look great, Missy."

I could almost _literally_ hear poor Vista's heart flip over several times as she stammered, "Wh-bu-I-umm... thank you, D-Dean." **That** was a crush that didn't surprise me in the least. Everyone in the Wards knew how Missy felt about the older boy.

"Okay, then it's settled." Victoria decided unilaterally. "We'll get these too." She turned, either ignoring or missing Missy's weak attempts to object. "After that, hmmm... where should we go next?"

"Movie?" I interrupted, noticing the exhausted look on both Amy and Dean's faces. Not to mention the way that Missy flinched at the idea of going into yet another store.

"Good idea." Crystal gave a nod, jumping to agree with the suggestion. "We could all use the chance to sit down and unwind."

"What movie?" My younger teammate asked, looking a good bit more interested than she had at the idea of shopping more.

"Something... funny." Crystal decided, glancing toward me. "Right?"

"Right." I agreed. Definitely funny. We'd had enough action and horror earlier, and romance was just _begging_ for trouble.

"All right then." Victoria smiled and shrugged, going with the flow fairly well even though her shopping had been cut short. "Let's pay for Missy's clothes and then see a movie."

Dean made a snorting noise as he started up to the front. "Let's? Does that mean you're contributing?" It was good natured teasing, I knew. Dean was part of one of the richest families in Brockton Bay.

Sticking her tongue out at her boyfriend, Victoria sniffed. "I contribute in plenty of ways."

Seeing Amy blanch, I turned to walk that way and interlinked her arm with mine, to her surprise. "Come on, Amy. While Missy's changing and those two are paying, we can go pick out the movie."

I glanced toward Crystal, who gave an approving nod. "I'll stay here and help Missy with her clothes."

"W-well... okay, I guess." Amy shrugged. "We can do that, Te-" She coughed. "I mean, umm, Madison."

"Call me Mads." I replied, pulling her from the store. "That's what my friends do."

We ended up watching two movies, a live action comedy and the latest computer animated family film. Both were fun, and by the time we left the theater, it was late. Darkness had settled over the city as we crossed the almost empty parking lot on the way back to Crystal's and Dean's cars. Unfortunately, we'd parked on the far side of the mall from where the theater was, and the mall itself was closed down when we got out of the movies. Which meant we had to hike through several lots to reach the right one.

That was all right though. I didn't exactly mind the idea of taking a walk with friends. It was relaxing, even with everything that had happened. Amy had finally started to smile partway through the first movie, and she was giggling by the end. That was part of why I'd pushed for the second one, because it had done so much good for the other girl.

I was also thinking about Mars. I'd very nearly given her a call to see if she wanted to come out to the movies with us. But in the end, I'd decided that Amy should be the focus, and that being around so many heroes might make the former-villain nervous. We were going to have to do something about that, but tonight hadn't been the time for it. I _had_ however, been texting her throughout the day, save for when the movies were rolling. She had no idea how Pandora could have 'made friends' with Dinah, save for the fact that both had been held in the same room within Coil's base before the clone escaped, taking her fellow prisoner with her. Apparently none of the other Noelle-clones had ever made any indication that they were more than bloodthirsty, violent monsters, though the specifics had varied. Some clones had been dead set on destroying everything that their original self cared about, while others had been a sort of unsuppressed, violent version of the original who viciously went after anything or anyone that their first selves had disliked or disagreed with. Pandora had apparently been one of the latter types, yet we weren't seeing much of that kind of influence now.

Shaking off those thoughts at the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps, I turned along with the others to see a pair of what looked like the most stereotypical gang members I had ever seen come rushing up to us. Both wore colors that clearly affiliated them with the Merchants, and their bodies had obviously been ravaged by years of drug use.

The one in the lead, a dark skinned boy of about seventeen or so, made a little squealing noise. "Eeeeehhhhhyyy! Ey, you're Glory Girl! Glory Girl and ummm, ummm, Wetdream." He giggled a little at his own 'joke', and I had to repress the urge to gag. Neither of the gang members smelled like they had bathed in days, possibly weeks. They were filthy, and had clearly been hiding out somewhere without showers.

"Laserdream." Crystal corrected smoothly. "Is there a problem?"

"Yeah, there's a fucking problem!" The teenager blurted. "That crazy psycho-cunt's about to kill us!"  
>"Shut the—shut the fuck up, man!" His companion, a slightly older white boy, shook his head. "We don't need no help. We got all the help we need right here." He patted his ratty green jacket, and I shot a look toward Crystal.<p>

The older girl caught it as well. "Okay, stop. No one's about to kill-"

She was interrupted by the sound of a swarm of rats that came rushing along the pavement, squeaking and squealing. The rodents piled on top of each other, melting and reshaping themselves into the familiar figure of Pandora.

The black gang member let out a girly squeal and threw himself behind Glory Girl, openly crying. "Don't—don't let her—don't, pleeeeeease! Arrest me, throw my ass in prison, I don't give a shit, just don't let her touch me!"

Pandora was watching me, her head tilted with curiosity. "Our truce does not extend to the filth of the violent gangs."

I swallowed, hesitating before looking toward Crystal. I'd let her take the lead, rather than risk blowing my cover in front of the gang members. Beside me, Dean and Missy were equally helpless to intervene at the moment.

"We also can't really just walk away and let you kill them." The other girl said slowly, clearly weighing our options. "That's not what we do."

Making a face as the cowering guy kept clinging to the back of her shirt, Victoria nodded nonetheless. "We won't let you kill them. They surrendered."

"Surrendered?" The other gang member, the disagreeable one, blurted. "Man we ain't surrendered. Merchants get shit done! You want surrender? Surrender **this!**" From inside his ratty jacket, the thug yanked out a rather complicated looking pistol-shaped contraption. He pointed it at Pandora and pulled the trigger before any of us could react, sending a wide dark green beam straight at her.

Crystal's hastily fired laser burned the weapon in half, but the damage had been done. A hole roughly the size of a softball had been burned through the middle of the clone's face and forehead, passing all the way through to the other side.

"Yeah! Yeah, cunt!" The guy exclaimed, even as the weapon was shot out of his hand and he was thrown roughly to the ground by Glory Girl. "You ain't so tough, huh?! Whattaya think of that, bitch?! Laser gun! Fuck yeah, maybe I ain't the best tinker there is, but I can fuck you up! You ain't..."

His voice trailed off in mid-sentence as he sat, staring along with the rest of us at Pandora. The clone hadn't fallen from having pretty much half of her head blown away. Before our eyes, the large hole closed up once more, her face restoring itself to what it had been moments earlier. The skin was pink and fresh for a moment before it resumed the same appearance as the rest of her. Finally, she opened her mouth and tilted her head as though to pop her neck.

"That..." I said slowly, unthinkingly. "That killed you before. That killed your.. your brain..."

She just gazed back at me coolly. "Vital organs remaining in easily known and repeatable locations was a design flaw. It has been corrected."

I blinked a couple times at that. It was Missy who got it first. "You... You moved your brain?"

Pandora regarded her for a moment before giving a single nod. "Moving the most vital organ to a semi-randomized location within each instance of ourselves drastically reduces the chance that a single blow will eliminate that instance."

"I... you... that..." Dean stammered, shaking his head. "That's... impressive." He looked like he wasn't sure if he was actually impressed, or horrified. I was personally settling on both.

"It is adaptation." Pandora corrected him. "We learn." Her eyes settled on the two gang members. "And we eliminate."

"Oh god, oh god, oh god." The frightened thug who had been clinging to Glory Girl until she had moved tried to scramble backwards. "Don't hurt me—don't hurt me—don't-"

Darkness claimed me, as it claimed each of the others. We fell, and my mind drifted through empty space, toward a massive form whose power dwarfed the stars that surrounded it...

"Uggnnn..." I groaned who knew how long later, lifting my head and blinking away both the cobwebs, and the remnants of the dream, which fled my consciousness like sand through an hourglass.

Pandora was up and on her feet, stalking toward the frightened thug, who was standing as well, though backpedaling away from her.

"Pandora..." I said blearily, while around me, the others were all starting to sit up as well. "Don't..."

She ignored me, focused as she was on the retreating gang member. "Escape? Intriguing. We would see how this 'escape' works."

"What are you..." I managed to get out, pushing myself to my feet.

Still ignoring me, Pandora leaned closer to the terrified thug. "Escape." She told me. "You will escape now."

Whimpering, the guy took a step backward, then another. Then he turned as though to run. Instantly, he vanished from sight. All I'd done was blink, and he was gone. My mouth fell open. "Oh..." He'd triggered. The terrified boy had actually_triggered_ and gained powers. That was what had knocked all of us, even his tinker friend, out.

Gazing after the spot where the boy had been, Pandora simply said, "Intriguing. Useful." She glanced toward me, her eyes narrowing a little. "What are the star beings?"

"Umm... what?" I shook my head. "What are you talking about?"

"Interesting." She repeated, her voice thoughtful. Then she turned back the way the guy had gone. "We will hunt him. You may have the other. Another truce." She melted into a fog before I could protest, and then she was gone, chasing the poor thug who had vanished.

"That was... weird. Did that guy just..." Missy said slowly from behind me. I turned to see the younger girl helping Dean to his feet.

"Trigger?" Victoria finished her thought while helping Amy up. "Yeah, he definitely did."

I moved to assist Crystal, and then the six of us turned our attention to the thug whose tinker-designed gun had failed to kill Pandora.

"Uhhh..." The guy sat there, gazing up at us before chuckling nervously. I saw his drug-ruined teeth and smelled the nasty stench that permeated the air around him. "I surrender?"

_**Interlude 6 – Coil**_

_April 13th_

_For all the stigma around the concept of using child soldiers,_ The man known as Coil thought to himself. _No one ever stops to think of how tiring it is for the man giving the orders._

He would compare it to herding cats, but that was an exercise he'd actually attempted once, and it wasn't nearly as difficult as that old saying would have one believe. Cats were relatively simple to deal with once one understood what they wanted. Children were forever changing their minds or debating about every minor detail. Where a cat would simply take the food offered it, _certain_ children would insist on knowing exactly where the food had come from and what sort of strings were attached.

Or worse, they would plot about how to take the source of the food away from the hand that fed them.

"All right, well, I brought them here like you asked, boss." Tattletale, one of the latter examples, indicated the two other girls and the boy that she had brought with her.

Behind his mask, Coil smiled. He knew that the girl objected to his request that the remaining Undersiders, including their newest member, be brought to his lair so that he could discuss things with them in person. She clearly believed that as long as the other members of the team didn't know who their employer was, it kept them safer.

Or perhaps she believed it lessened her own value. As good as he was at reading people, he'd never fully cemented just where Tattletale's morals and loyalty to her team lay, nor whether her own ambition was stronger than that loyalty. It all seemed to vary by the moment, day by day.

He did know that, given the chance, she would turn on him in an instant. But her power, and her ability to convince people of what he needed, was too important to throw away. So, for the moment, he had simply resolved to stay several steps ahead of any plan she might concoct. There were various ways that he insured this, ranging from bugging her quarters, to having her followed, to more... direct methods.

For a moment, he took a moment to simply appreciate the quiet solitude that his other self was experiencing. Rather than deal with the Undersiders problems, the other Coil had gone home early to enjoy a pleasant, simple night of reading and relaxation.

In this reality, however, he had to focus. Injecting as much warmth into his voice as he could, the man extended a gloved hand toward Heartbreaker's son. "Regent, I presume. A pleasure to finally meet you in person."

Rather than shake his hand, as any decently mannered person would, the arrogant child simply interlocked his own hands behind his head and rocked backwards. "Nice digs you've got here. Does it come with a moat full of sharks or a lava pit?"

Ignoring that, as the boy had ignored his hand, Coil focused on the elder of the two girls. "And you would be... I'm told you prefer Bitch."

Again, this one ignored his offered hand, making him grind his teeth just a little. She rolled her eyes and went back to petting the dog at her feet. "Whatever, just tell us what you want now."

"Soon, I promise." The man assured the girl. He didn't want the group here any longer than they wanted to be there.

Turning his attention toward the last, youngest, and newest member of the group, he asked, "And you would be Grue's sister. Have you settled on a name yet?" The girl had only gained her powers two days earlier, on that night that her brother had been captured. The very idea of yet another person she cared about abandoning her (not that Grue's capture had been the boy's choice) had caused the girl to manifest the ability to prevent anyone she touched from leaving at all. At least until they were touched again by anyone.

"Freezetag." She replied, squinting into the eyes of his mask as though trying to read him. "Now that we're all introduced, how about you tell us how we're saving my brother?"

Before he could respond to the insolence, a buzzing inside the pocket of his costume alerted him to a phone call. At the same time, his other self was interrupted in his relaxation by the same call. He ignored the call in this reality, letting his other self answer it.

"I will secure the time and route of Grue's transfer." Coil assured the Undersiders. "But that will not be for a couple of days. In the meantime, there is another job, a timing critical job, that I require."

"Bullshit." The newly dubbed Freezetag said sharply, shaking her head. "No way no how. We get Grue back or we don't do a damn thing."

"Tag," Tattletale warned. "Take it easy. The boss is good for his word. He said we'll get Grue back as soon as they transfer him." She turned her attention back to the man himself then. "But I already told you, we don't have the bodies for a big job. You want us to get people's attention, great, but we don't have Grue to cover our escape. And Freezetag barely understands her power. We need time, or more help."

She was digging, he knew. Trying to find out what resources he had that he could loan them, what capes he could let their team use. That would give her even more information for her power to work with to possibly find a weakness.

Meanwhile, the other Coil, or Thomas Calvert, as he was at home and out of his costume, picked up the phone and looked at the ID briefly before answering. "Circus. Is it done?"

Circus was one whom he had originally thought might make a useful addition to the Undersiders, but it turned out she worked far too well alone, and not at all well as part of a team. So he simply paid her whenever he had something important that needed to be done, such as now.

"Good news and bad news. I gave the racist bitch the vial you got the bomb maker to fix up, along with the instructions about giving it to her ex."

"And the bad news?" He asked, keeping his voice calm and even.

"That new solo hero was hiding nearby." Came the reply. "Think they call him Beatbro?"

"Browbeat." Calvert barely resisted the urge to growl the name. It was important that his people always think that he was perfectly in control. "Do you have him?"

"Got him just as he was about to take off." Circus affirmed. "You want me to end him?"

He was about to agree, when another thought occurred to him.

In the reality where Coil was talking to the Undersiders, he canceled his other self. It would have appeared as though he'd simply paused to think for a moment. Then he reached into his pocket, withdrew the phone that had stopped vibrating, and called the number back.

Circus answered. "Good timing, I've got good news and bad-"

"Bring him here." He said simply, cutting the young woman off. "I believe that the situation may still be salvaged, and he could be of use." Without giving her time to respond to that, he cut the call short.

Honestly, that was a part of his power that he would never tire of. Gaining information from one of his people in one of his realities, then using that information in conversation with that same person in his other reality, leaving them confused as to how he could possibly know what he knew. It helped spread the idea of his infallibility, which was important to his mission and to his image.

"I believe a possible solution has presented itself." He said to the waiting Undersiders. "An... unfortunate incident has caused a potential snag in one of my longer term plans." Coil hadn't meant to reveal the extent of what he was doing to any of them just yet, but if this new idea was going to pan out, they would need to know just a little more than planned.

He explained about the solo hero overhearing his other associate and Purity, and that he was now being brought to them.

"How the hell does that help us?" Bitch demanded. "He's not on our side."

It was Tattletale who spoke. "You want Regent to use his power on him. His full power."

That got Regent's attention. "Yeah? Risky. Could end up blowing my cover, get all sorts of bad attention."

"He's solo, and unknown." Coil assured them. "It will be assumed that he simply changed sides."

Tattletale was shaking her head. "I'm not sure about enslaving a guy, boss." She was clearly choosing her words carefully, watching his reaction. "It's kind of... extreme."

"Hey, what?" Freezetag was clearly confused. "Who said anything about enslaving someone?" Beside her, Bitch frowned a bit, but said nothing.

Standing still for a second, Coil split his timelines again.

In the first, he let out a breath, and then pulled the pistol from its place at his back. Barely taking the time to aim, he fired a single shot into Regent's forehead before the boy even knew he was in danger. Then he tracked to the right and shot Freezetag between the eyes as she jolted in surprise. Tracking further to the right put a third bullet into Bitch, followed by a fourth to her dog.

Tattletale was attempting to throw herself out of the way when he fired twice, taking the arrogant girl out at the knees. Her scream of pain was much nicer to hear than her constant arguments.

"I will do as I please." His voice was cold as he stood over the girl, gazing down at her whimpering form. His two shots had destroyed her knees, leaving the fallen girl in blinding agony. Slowly, he reached down, took hold of her simple domino mask, and tugged it away. "You would do well to remember that, and to cease testing my patience."

Dropping the mask to the side, he dropped the pistol and produced a switchblade, which he used to draw a thin line of blood down the girl's cheek. "Let us hope that enough of an impression is made that your other self makes better choices in the future."

In the other timeline, the Undersiders, still living and well, stood and waited for his response. His anger was being abated in a healthy manner (in his opinion), and now the man was ready to be more reasonable and explain himself in this reality. "Allow me to rephrase." Coil kept his voice calm. "I cannot allow this boy to run free. I had thought to simply kill him..." He watched this reality's Tattletale flinch at the suggestion in spite of her attempt at a cool demeanor, while his other self drew forth agonized screams from his version of the girl. It really made coping with the girl's constant attempts at undermining him that much more palatable. Especially when he knew that every time he did it, the girl would get a terrible sense of foreboding and certainty that he would do terrible things to her and her friends, yet he never actually did. At least from her perspective.

"I would kill him." He continued. "But he may be useful to your team. So long as he remains under Regent's command and is therefore not a threat to me, I would allow him to live. Doing so would also give the Undersiders some much needed muscle, I believe."

Exchanging glances with the other members of her team, Tattletale finally nodded. "Then, I guess we'll take him."

"Excellent." This Coil canceled his other timeline, the therapeutic massacre restoring his patience so that he was almost happy. "I'm so glad we could reach an understanding."

_Present Day_

"Your request is denied, Mr. Calvert." The dispassionate voice of Doctor Mother came through the phone that Coil held to his ear. "We wish for the girl to remain alive at this point. As you know, we are not in the habit of throwing away useful parahumans, and her ability to predict imminent danger may well end up being vital, if nurtured properly."

He resisted the urge to growl, barely. Maintaining the illusion of being unflappable was more difficult with the leader of Cauldron, one of the only people in the world who knew just what his power was, and how it worked. He also owed her for everything, and thus he had no choice but to follow her wishes. "She could complicate matters for me." He tried to explain patiently once again. "I still do not understand how she can sense my split realities, or why. And now the escaped clone is calling her... useful."

"Yes, the clone." Doctor Mother replied. "At some point, we will of course require an explanation of why we were not informed of your acquisition of this... Noelle."

Cursing inwardly, Calvert shook his head. "You were going to meet them anyway." He lied to her as easily as he had lied to the Travelers. "It was part of the deal for their assistance in these matters. But that leaves the matter of the Panacea clone, and the Clements girl."

"Either could be useful to our purposes." The careful woman went quiet after that for a moment before continuing. "Find a way of containing the clone so that we can study her. The abilities she has... well, they could prove to be as vital as any research we've ever done."

"Useful, and... worth a fair amount, then." Calvert prompted.

The woman sighed. "Yes, if you secure the clone, you may consider your debt paid."

It wouldn't be easy, of course, but he would find a way. "And the Clements girl."

"She must survive." Doctor Mother said again, in a tone that brooked no argument. "That being said, it would not be a bad thing if her power was... nurtured. We would like to know the extent of it, and just how far it, and she, can be pushed. Perhaps, given the proper motivation, she may be able to sense things from further away, or gain more details. Any advancement on that end would be... commendable."

"I'll see what I can do." He replied, keeping his voice as detached as hers had been as he watched one of his secret weapons through the glass window overlooking the room where she was training. "So long as she survives...?"

"As long as she survives, you have no dispute with us." The woman confirmed. "Now, I'm quite busy."

"I'm sure you are." He acknowledged. "I'll let you know when I have something, on either front."

She disconnected without another word, and Calvert split his timelines.

In one, he hurled the phone at the wall just to watch it burst into pieces, before screaming. "YOU STUPID, ARROGANT, NASTY BITCH! If I want to kill someone-" He turned, using both arms to furiously sweep the contents of his desk onto the floor before raising his foot to kick the desk over onto its side. "I'll damn well kill them!"

Taking his knife, Calvert slammed it into the wall once, then twice, and then a third time before dragging the blade through it to make a long, ugly gash. "She can detect my power, you ignorant cunt! That means she could know that I HAVE a power, which ruins every plan I have!"

Rearing back, he put his foot through the screen of the monitor that he had shoved onto the floor, then drew his foot back again and kicked it across the room as he bellowed, "**WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO TO FIND ONE FUCKING COMPETENT PERSON WHO GIVES A SHIT ABOUT WHAT I WANT?!"**

"Not to mention!" He continued to vent while taking his pistol from its place on the shelf. He aimed at the sound of footsteps approaching. The first of his men that came running in to see what was happening took a bullet in the right eye. "That stupid fucking clone! It was supposed to keep the Travelers happy, keep them working, but it had to run away! It left, it fucking left, and it-"

He walked forward, firing six more shots to take down three more of his own men, then turned and hurled the empty gun at the wall while screaming the next words. "**TOOK MY PET PSYCHIC WITH IT!"**

"And now!" At that point, he resorted to repeatedly and furiously kicking the fallen bodies of his men. "The fucking clone is running around calling Tether USEFUL, and that fucking BITCH of a doctor won't let me deal with the situation!"

In the other timeline, his other self had simply stood with his eyes closed, breathing while absorbing the benefit of his outburst with none of the consequences. Finally, his eyes opened and he erased that timeline, before walking calmly out of his office.

Striding purposefully down to the training room, Coil cleared his throat to get the occupant's attention. Once the girl known as Shadow Stalker gave it to him, reluctantly, he spoke. "It's time to begin."

Lifting her head curiously, sweating profusely from her training, Sophia asked, "You taking her out already?"

"No." He shook his head. "No, Tether lives. But it's time to... begin taking away the things that she cares about. It's time to see just how good her danger sense is." He looked at the girl purposefully. "Can you do that? Can you take away the things... the people, that she cares for?"

Sophia hesitated for just a second, long enough for him to gently brush his finger over the ring that he wore, the ring that held the detonator that would kill her instantly. Then she straightened and snarled. "No problem. No problem at all."


	7. Arc 7: Choices

**Notes:**

Moka-girl – Hey, thanks for adding the story to your community! More exposure and more thoughts is always good. Thanks for your comments on each chapter, and yeah, I put up all that was done at once rather than hold chapters that were already finished hostage. Which may have had the unintended effect of dumping in too much for people to read at one time. ;)

Starfox5 – Glad you like Pandora, as well as Marissa. I don't know if 'like' Coil is the right word, but... I'm glad you appreciate his evilness? As for Danny, he'll show up again at some point, hopefully with a better fate than he seems to have gotten so far. :/

Anyway, I hope you all keep enjoying it, even though this next Arc is rather... dark. But not excessively so, I hope.

**7.01**

"So why 'Kid Win' anyway?" I asked Chris while hopping from foot to foot to stay loose, so that I'd be ready to move the instant I needed to. I was in costume, save for my hood and mask, so that I wouldn't get accustomed to moving without the uniform and armor, and then be totally thrown off when I tried to do the same things with it on.

In the two days that had passed since the night with Pandora and the two Merchants, I hadn't heard anything about the guy who had triggered, but the tinker thug had been taken into custody. Nor had there been any sign of Emma. Her father was completely freaking out, constantly demanding that everyone from Armsmaster down to the parking lot sweeper look for her. I'd been checking my profile on PHO every couple hours, but she hadn't responded to my message yet.

No one that I knew had seen Pandora thus far, but it seemed as though she was following our deal. Certain gang members and other would-be minor villains that had been trickling into the city in the wake of the collapse of the Empire Eighty-Eight had continued to disappear without a trace. It wasn't enough to completely stem the tide, and there was still plenty of newcomers who either hadn't heard of how dangerous the streets could be for their kind or didn't believe the reports. Either way, we still had plenty to do, even with the whispers going around about the unstoppable creature that was _eating_ any villains who crossed her path.

It made me wonder about a couple of things. First, about just how bad the streets would have been if Pandora hadn't been out there picking off the stragglers and outliers. Second, just what was going to happen if Pandora did get out of control, if she decided to go back on her word or find some other loop hole. Or worse, what would happen if someone stupidly decided to provoke her.

The fact remained, I was going to have to find the girl and figure out some way to communicate. She thought I was useful against Coil, which seemed to make me the best suited to actually talking without ending up dead for saying the wrong thing. The trouble was actually _finding_ Pandora.

On the other side of the training room, Chris fidgeted with the complicated backpack system that he'd been building lately. Two different wide-mouthed barrels were mounted on either side of it, capable of rotating to shoot in almost any direction. "I dunno." He replied. "It sounded cool at the time. I'm probably gonna have to change it if I go into the Protectorate after graduation. Can't be an adult hero called Kid."

"How old was Billy the Kid?" I wondered. "It could be an homage."

"Winny the Kid?" Dennis suggested from where he was sitting. He winked at me, just before there was a whoomph noise as a foam ball smacked into the side of his head. The red-haired boy yelped in surprise as he fell sideways and out of his chair.

"Let anyone else hear that suggestion," Chris warned. "And the next ball won't be foam."

"Are you sure that one was?" Dennis complained, rubbing the side of his head as he picked himself up off the floor. "Aren't you supposed to be shooting those at Mads, anyway?"

Chris just smiled at that and shrugged. "Had to make sure the chambers were clear." He looked to me then. "Ready, Maddy?"

I nodded, while Dennis muttered about how of course **I** got a warning.

At my agreement, Chris indicated his left side. "Gonna take it slow at first, with lots of warning. Left barrel, one third speed, on three." He counted down slowly, then activated the barrel.

With another whoomph noise, a second foam ball shot out of the barrel, arcing up toward my side of the room. As it flew lazily through the air, I extended a hand, focusing on creating a tether-line between my glove and the ball. As soon as it attached, I gave a tug so that the ball altered course and came to my hand.

"Pretty good." Chris acknowledged as I tossed the ball away. "But that was a test run. I'm going to start alternating. I'll still count down, but I'm not gonna tell you which barrel. After a few more, we'll move up to half speed. Then we'll lose the count down once you get three in a row, and finally, we'll move up to full speed."

Having resumed his seat, Dennis called, "Don't forget, we've only got a couple hours before the transfer."

"Right..." I said slowly while Chris was counting down. "The transfer. That'll be fun." Another whoomph announced the launch of a third ball, and I quickly hooked a line between it and Dennis's arm.

Yelping as the ball bounced off his arm, Dennis still caught it before it could fall, and threw it at me. "Hey, I'm not supposed to be a target."

I just grinned. Because I'd kept the line between the ball and Dennis, all I had to do after he threw it was give another yank so that the ball came right back at him. His attempt to dodge was futile since the line was attached directly to him.

That time, he slapped the ball with a hand, freezing it in the air. "Try to hit me with the ball now." A quick series of whoomph sounds came, just as the cocky smirk left his face. Diving to the floor and covering his head as an avalanche of balls careened off of him, Dennis shouted toward Chris. "I wasn't talking to you!"

The ABB hit Bakuda's transfer van hard. One minute the van had been peacefully passing just below the building where Kid Win and I stood on the roof, and in the next, a pair of small explosions blew out the front tires of the vehicle and sent it skidding sideways.

Even before the van finished skidding to a halt, at least two dozen ABB troops poured out of both nearby alleys, rushing toward the vehicle.

For just a second, I stared. "They want her back, bad." I said to Chris while pointing a hand down toward the street and attaching a tether line.

"Makes sense." Kid Win replied, adjusting his flightpack. He'd spent most of the last few days reassembling the remains of his board into this current backpack shape that would still let him fly. It still wasn't as fast or as maneuverable as the board had been before he'd spontaneously taken it apart for whatever project he'd been doing, but it would work for our purposes. "They already lost Lung to the Bird Cage. Lee doesn't wanna be the _only_ cape they've got."

The two of us descended to the ground, putting ourselves between the damaged van and the rushing troops.

"Man," I called out while shaking my head in disappointment. "I know it's hard to hail a cab in this city, but you guys have gone **way** overboard."

The reaction of the nearest five men was to point their weapons, but the red line that popped up leading to Kid Win gave me enough warning. Before they could fire, I attached a line between myself and Chris, using it to propel the two of us away from each other while the bullets tore up the pavement where we'd been.

As my line sent him flying sideways, Kid unhooked the rifle from his pack and leveled it at the group. A single pull of his trigger sent out a concussive blast that blew three of the ABB guys tumbling backwards, and made the other two stumble.

Before that pair could recover, I used a pair of lines to yank their weapons away, then another line to pull myself to them, where my gauntlet-covered fists put them down just hard enough that they wouldn't want to get up any time soon.

"I mean seriously, have you considered public transportation?" I continued my previous thought, even as two more men tried to shoot me. I launched myself skyward, up and over their arc of fire. Landing behind the pair, I attached a line between either of their backs and then to a parked bus nearby. "They're really quite convenient." I pointed out as the pair was yanked violently into the side of the bus before dropping.

Turning toward the next group, I made an exaggerated shrug. "Just seems like this whole 'attack people as awesome and brilliant as the Wards' thing was really shooting yourselves in the foot." Before they fired, I attached their barrels to either of their feet. At the resulting howls of agony as the gunshots blew through their shoes, I added, "See what I did there?"

Somehow I didn't think they appreciated my jokes.

"Little help, Tether!" Kid was having trouble. He'd dealt with at least half of the thugs that had been there, but even more were taking their places. I caught three running guys, attached the lines to each of them, and then yanked them together so that they all collapsed into a pile of flailing limbs and curses.

It wasn't enough. For every couple that one of the two of us managed to deal with, three more kept coming. It got to the point where I was forced to focus almost entirely on avoiding gunfire and keeping an eye on Kid in case they tried to swarm him.

Apparently saying that the ABB wanted Bakuda back was a severe understatement. They were throwing everything they had at the transport.

All except for..

"Lee!" Kid Win called out the warning, and I jerked my gaze that way to find Oni Lee. The third and final member of the ABB's trio of cape leadership, Oni's power was essentially a mixture of teleportation and extremely brief duplication. He could teleport and leave a copy of himself behind. It would last for several seconds before it dissolving into a cloud of ash. He tended to use it in nasty ways, by making the equivalent of repeatable suicide bombers. He was not a nice guy. And now he had brought himself into the battle. I caught sight of him briefly, standing at the edge of the street with his distinctive black bodysuit and ornate Japanese demon mask before that body fell apart into the white ash. He'd already teleported.

Seeing the black line attached to Kid, I instantly put a line against his back and yanked him out of the way. A second later, Oni Lee appeared right behind where he had been. The grenade that the Lee had been holding exploded a second later, but thankfully it only took out Lee. Or rather, the clone he'd obviously left behind just before teleporting again. I wasn't stupid enough to think he'd actually blow himself up on accident.

I put Kid down near me, turning in a slow circle while keeping an eye on the van. The remaining ABB troops were still surrounding us, but the appearance of Oni Lee made them shy about approaching. They clearly didn't trust their leader not to blow them up in an attempt to get either of us.

Another line popped up on Chris. I launched both of us skyward before Lee could follow through on his attack, leaving the resulting grenade explosion to blow apart the pavement where we'd been standing.

"He's going for the van!" Kid Win called to me. He oriented his flight pack that way, and I put a line down to pull myself in the same direction.

It was too late. Lee had already blown the doors off of the van, and he was stepping up into the back of the van. I landed just a bit ahead of Chris and took three steps to reach the ruined vehicle doors before hauling myself up. "Wait!" I called out.

Gazing over his shoulder at me as he unhooked the restraints on Bakuda's prison bed. Though his demon mask covered his face, I could sense his smirk. He'd won. He'd freed Bakuda, and now all he had to do was teleport away with her.

He stooped slightly to gather the limp figure up into his arms. Then he froze, entirely.

From the pile of blankets that had been on the cot, the figure that Oni Lee had been 'rescuing' sat up. "Myyyy hero." Clockblocker announced in a high, falsetto voice before sighing dreamily. He patted Lee's frozen cheek.

"Damn it!" Kid Win reached us just then. "Did I miss it? Did I miss the look on his face when he realized we tricked him and Bakuda wasn't even here?"

"He was frozen before he could realize it." I pointed out. "You can see the look on his face when he comes out of it."

"Good point." He replied.

Leaving Dennis to keep Oni frozen, the two of us turned to gaze back at the remaining group of ABB soldiers, who didn't look like they had any idea of what to do.

"So here's the deal!" I called out. "We totally just punk'd your boss. So you could keep fighting us now..."

"Or you could surrender." A voice that was not my own finished. The small army of thugs turned to find Aegis, Vista, and Gallant waiting on the far side of them, trapping the group between us.

"Personally," Aegis announced, hovering a foot off the ground. "I'm kind of hoping you choose to fight. Standing on the sidelines waiting for Lee to think the coast was clear was boring as hell. I could use the exercise."

The ABB troops all stared at one another. Then, one by one, they dropped their weapons and fell to their knees. The last of their super-powered bosses had been captured.

They were done.

**7.02**

"And here it is." At Chris's announcement, a photograph landed in the middle of the table in the Wards HQ, narrowly missing one of several pizzas that were scattered along the wooden surface. "The picture of Oni Lee's face when he found out we tricked him and that he was locked securely in PRT custody."

"How'd they transport him?" I asked while snagging a third piece of the double pepperoni. "I mean, they couldn't move him as long as Clockblocker's power was working, right?"

It was Dennis who answered that. "Easy. They just covered his head with a bag and had a doctor wait. As soon as the time stop wore off, he got injected with 'go to sleep juice'. By the time he woke up, they already had him disarmed and in a security cell."

Chris picked up the explanation then. "They've got all kinds of precautions for teleporters there. Since Lee can only teleport line of sight, they're keeping him in a cell with no sight lines anywhere but the inside of the cell. There's a separate vestibule just outside the cell that they keep dark. Anyone that wants to get in the cell goes in the first door, shuts it, then opens the second door to get in the cell itself. They've also got shock cuffs on his wrists in case he tries anything."

"So we won." Missy took a long sip from her own drink. "We totally took the last of the ABB down." She was smiling with satisfaction at a job well done. I couldn't help but think about myself at thirteen. My priorities back then had been far from 'beat up a gang of criminals and put them in prison'. I didn't even used to like watching **movies** like that. Yet Vista had been doing this stuff since a month before she turned eleven.

That kid was something else. Not that I'd call her a kid to her face. She'd hurt me.

I used the crust of my latest slice of pizza to poke Dennis then. "You've still gotta help me practice with that game. When's that happening?"

Snatching the crust from me, the red-headed boy took a bite from it. "First night that we both have off? I've got patrol in a few hours. What about tomorrow?"

I started to shake my head. "Nah, tomorrow night's my turn."

From the other end of the table, Dean waved a hand. "I'll cover tomorrow if you'll get my patrol the next night. Vicky wanted to go out."

"Great!" I chirped and caught the remainder of my crust out of Dennis's hand, popping it into my mouth. "It's a deal." I glanced toward him for confirmation.

Dennis nodded, taking a long gulp from his soda. "Works for me. How come you're so interested in learning how to play that game now anyway?"

I hesitated, then shrugged. "Sundancer's into it. I figured if I learned enough to at least not completely suck, we could play together."

Carlos, sitting with the chair backwards, raised an eyebrow. "And that would be your contact from the Travelers? The one who won't come in and talk to anyone but you?"

"It's complicated." I muttered, not really wanting to get too much into it. "She wants to change, but there's a lot of other issues. Not to mention that Coil, whoever he is-" I stated that part firmly, intent that the supervillain was _not_ Mr. Hebert. "- has way too many contacts in the PRT. If she comes forward, he's going to find out about it."

Setting her glass down to take another slice for herself, Missy shook her head. "What else can she do? Just hide forever?"

"We figure out who Coil is and expose him." I said, trying to express more confidence than I felt in that moment. "As soon as it's safe, I'll work on convincing Sundancer that it's safe to come in." I hesitated, then looked up at the rest of my team. "Thanks, guys. For... trusting me. For trusting her, and not pushing things too much."

"You're one of us." Chris pointed out, his smile infectious. "We look out for each other."

"Too bad Sophia never figured that out." Dean said quietly, shaking his head.

Tossing her unfinished slice down, Missy sighed. "Where is she, anyway?"

"Yeah," Carlos glanced my way. "I don't suppose Sundancer has any other thoughts on Coil's plan for Stalker?"

I shook my head and sighed. "The Travelers weren't part of that plan. Stupid Coil keeping stupid plans stupid secret."

"Stupid secret?" Dennis raised an eyebrow. "I'm not sure that's the right way to say that."

I answered that by sticking my tongue out at him, while stealing one of his breadsticks to take a bite. "Point is, as soon we find Coil, we can bring Sundancer in." At least, I hoped we could. I'd have to explain some of the... other stuff at the time. But first things first.

"Sounds good." Carlos drummed his fingers along the table thoughtfully. "All we have to do is figure out who he is."

"Well sure." Dennis spread his arms wide. "But what are we gonna do with the rest of the afternoon?"

A couple of hours later, a popcorn kernel arced through the air and fell into my open mouth. Smiling in satisfaction, I chewed and swallowed. "Yum, salt plus butter equals delicious."

"Sounds like someone's ready to start getting math homework again." Marissa teased. We were on her couch. She was sitting, while I laid with the back of my head on her leg. It was... comfortable.

Still, I made a face at her. "Did you have to remind me? Pretty soon I'm going to have to figure out how to balance school and work again." I tossed another bit of popcorn from the bowl on the floor up, catching it with my mouth.

I'd come over to the small apartment that she had managed to get, so that the two of us could watch a movie. It was one of the films that had been imported from the Earth that she was from. So far, we hadn't actually started it, since I'd been catching the other girl up on what had happened earlier with Oni Lee.

"Okay that's impossible." Mars complained after I had caught the popcorn kernel again. "You are so using your powers. That time you weren't even looking when you threw it."

I made a sound as if I was offended. "What, you doubt my talent? I do have other skills besides my powers, you know." I sniffed, turning it into a pout.

"Awwww." Mars groaned. "That isn't fair. No puppy sulk." She moved a pillow to cover my face, which clearly broke my pout's hold over her.

I said something muffledly into the pillow, until she moved it up just far enough that I could talk, still using it as a fluffy shield. "I said, besides, I can't attach a line to my skin or mouth or anything, remember? How could I get it to come to me?"

Lowering the pillow to squint at me thoughtfully, Marissa spoke slowly. "That's... a good point, I guess. So how did you get to be so good at it, anyway?"

I grinned impishly while admitting, "Attaching a line from the popcorn to the side of your pants that my head is resting against. Don't have to see what I'm attaching things to when I can feel them." To demonstrate, I threw a piece of popcorn off toward the television and then opened my mouth to catch it as it came flying back. "Yum."

She groaned out loud and hit me lightly with the pillow. "Cheater."

"You know it." I shot back, grabbing the pillow to pull away from her and hugged it to my chest.

"Speaking of how you can't affect living things," She began. "What was that law called? You know, the umm... Manson Effect."

"Manton Effect." I replied. Granted, I only knew off the top of my head because of the study work I'd put into the Wards and the Protectorate. "It's named after some scientist or something that figured out the rule. Or at least the guy who put a name to it."

"That's the one that says that powers that affect living things don't affect nonliving things, and vice versa." She said slowly, thoughtfully.

"Usually." I confirmed. "It usually works that way. That's why my lines won't connect to people. And why they wouldn't connect to anything Pandora had on, because she wasn't actually wearing them. The 'clothes' were just... part of her." I made a face at the thought, briefly. There was something a little gross and creepy about the whole thing. Not that 'Pandora' and 'creepy' was some new combination.

Shaking off that thought, I shrugged my shoulders. "Of course, some capes have figured out ways to bypass it somehow. Like Narwhal."

"She's the one with the forcefields?" Marissa confirmed. When I raised an eyebrow at her lack of certainty, she nudged me with her leg. "Gimme a break, I've been a little preoccupied since the Simurgh threw me out here with the others." She went quiet then, swallowing. "A little busy trying to help Noelle."

Reaching back and up, I caught hold of the other girl's hand and squeezed it. "We'll help her, Mars. I haven't forgotten. We'll find a way to get Noelle back to normal. I mean, as soon as Clockblocker shows me which buttons for that game you like so much won't make my characters immediately commit seppuku, you'll need all the help you can get to keep up with me."

After remaining limp for a moment in my grasp, Mars returned the squeeze. "I know." She said quietly before managing a smile. "And when Noelle's back to normal, she'll kick both our asses at that game, no matter how many tips you get from Clockboy." The levity lasted for only a second before she sighed. "I'm just not sure how we're actually going to fix her."

I sat up and put myself next to her on the couch, putting my free arm around the other girl. "The Protectorate has all kinds of scientists, Mars. They've even got bio-tinkers. There's gotta be something. If nothing else, we'll figure out more about the stuff you guys took. If someone **made** those powers, then they can **unmake** them." I squeezed her a little. "What do you remember about them?"

Marissa didn't even have to think about it. She recited, clearly from memory. "Six canisters. The note inside congratulated whoever it was on their 'newly purchased superpowers'"

"Purchased superpowers..." I said slowly, shaking my head in wonder. "I still don't get how that's even possible."  
>"We're living proof." The other girl pointed out. "There were more papers, I really wish I'd read all of them. Krouse did, and so did Jess. There was something about the impact that one of the canisters could have on the client's cerebral palsy. Each of the canisters was labeled with a bunch of letters and numbers, and a few code words along with the percentage of the mixture they made up. Mine, the one I took, had three of them. Fifty-five percent of something called 'Prince', thirty percent of something called 'Aegis', and fifteen percent of something called 'Balance'. Balance was on all of them though, so whatever it is, I think it has to do with not letting the powers get out of control or something."<p>

I hesitated. "So they all had balance in the mixture, and Noelle only took half?"

Swallowing, Marissa nodded. "Trust me, I thought of that. Too fucking late, but I thought of it." Eyes closing, she growled. "If only Krouse had just given her the whole canister, maybe this wouldn't be happening to her!" After a moment, she lowered her head. "Or none of it."

"She might have died without what he gave her." I pointed out as gently as I could.

"At least she wouldn't be what she is now!" Marissa's eyes opened once more to stare at me. "This... this thing that she's turning into, we kind of think it might be some sort of Proto-Endbringer. That's how dangerous she might be, Mads. That's how... how bad it might get. And if we have to fight her, if we have to stop her... I'm not sure I... I'm not sure I can even..."

She choked a little, and I embraced her tightly, pulling the other girl against me. "Hey, hey. That's enough for now. This is supposed to be a fun afternoon. Fun, remember? The ABB's down for the count, Pandora hasn't destroyed the city yet, and there's no more fighting to do right now. We'll figure out the rest, one day at a time."

After a moment, Marissa returned the hug tightly and murmured. "Thank you, Maddy." She rested her head against my shoulder briefly, breathing in and out. "For the record, you give really good hugs."

Smiling in spite of myself, I shrugged one shoulder and replied quietly. "I've heard something to that effect."

We sat there like that for another few seconds, before she straightened with obvious reluctance. "Well, if I'm gonna stop dwelling, we should probably start the movie."

"Right." I attached a line from the remote on the nearby table to the couch, then caught it as the thing flew. "Let's watch the movie. Fun time."

I never had the chance to hit play. In the next moment, an obnoxious, loud whining alarm blaring from somewhere outside. It sounded like an air raid siren.

The color fled from my face, and I dropped the remote. The television was already showing images directing people on how to evacuate or find the shelter nearest to where they were.

"Endbringer." I said over the noise of the siren, my voice hollow. "An Endbringer here. Leviathan, it has to be."

"You're going, aren't you?" Marissa said, her own voice shaken. She had taken my hand and wasn't letting go. "You're not going to a shelter, you're going to help."

"I have to." I told her, even as the fear swelled up inside. "I can see when people are about to die. Maybe I can... help make a difference." I pushed myself up. "I have to be there."

"Wait." She kept hold of my hand, rising with me. "Let me change. I'll... I'll go with you."

"You don't have to do that, Mars." I told her quickly. "You can go to a shelter. You'd be safe there. Safer anyway."

She just stared at me for a long moment, and I knew how much she wanted to agree, how much she wanted to abandon the desperate, possibly fatal fight to others and go hide in a shelter. I knew because I felt the same way. It was a fear that made it hard to stand, a terror that made my knees shake, that brought tears to my eyes at the very thought of it. I wanted to run away.

Still, I wasn't going to. And as I watched Mars, I knew she wasn't going to either.

"I do have to." She said, both resigned and determined. "After everything bad I did, if I don't help now... then there was no point to changing in the first place."

I swallowed at how close that hit to my own feelings. Though I tried to make my voice light, the severity of the situation hammered into both of us with each repetition of the blaring siren.

"All right. Well... let's go beat up an Endbringer."

**7.03**

"You're not coming to the shelter, are you?" My dad's voice through the phone that I held to my ear was as certain as it was worried. "They're saying we have enough warning this time to actually make it to safety before Leviathan gets here." Those words carried a faint sound of hope.

"I can't, Dad." I said slowly, flinching when I thought of what that answer had to be doing to him, and to my mother. "They need me here. I can help. My lines direct me to people that are in trouble. I can't just walk away from that. Even if I wanted to, I'd just be sitting in that shelter, watching my death lines pop up and then disappear the entire time. I... I couldn't live like that, Dad."

A regretful, but understanding sigh escaped him, and we were both quiet for a few moments. While I waited, I glanced around the briefing room that everyone was gathering in. And by everyone, I meant **everyone**. Not only was the entire local Protectorate team, our Wards group, and all of New Wave present, but there were also members from at least two other Ward Teams, and the entire Boston Protectorate including the up and coming Dauntless, whose ability to infuse items with a bit of power, gradually gaining in strength every day with no known ceiling to his power. There were also a few other scattered heroes from across the state who had made it in time, and each of the Triumvirate had showed up with members from their own teams. Only the seriousness of the situation had kept me from utterly geeking out at seeing Legend again, not to mention Eidolon and Alexandria.

Beyond the more than sixty heroes who were standing around the room, there were also a few rogues, like Parian, whose ability let her animate stuffed animals or... something, as well as Defiant, in his impressive white and gold power armor.

"Be careful." Dad's voice came through, like it was the hardest thing he'd ever said. "Please. Please, be careful. I love you.**We** love you. Come..." He choked a little bit, and I flinched at the thought that I was making my father feel this afraid. "Come back."

In spite of my desire to promise that I would, I couldn't. All I could offer my father was that I would try, that I would be as careful as I could be. He and my mother were with Trevor in a shelter, telling my brother that I was in one of the other shelters. I had no idea how they were avoiding letting him know just how worried they were.

Finally, after telling both of my parents that I loved them, I also got the cursory six word conversation with Trevor where he mumbled that he loved me, more embarrassed that the idea of actually saying that out loud than he was worried about me. Not that I could blame him that much. As far as he knew, I was safe in one of the other shelters.

For a moment, just a moment, I thought about telling him the truth. But I shook my head and put the desire down to spur of the moment weakness, before having one last conversation with my dad. Then I hung up, sighed, and turned my attention to the others in the room, the villains. The few remaining members of what had been the Empire were there, having crawled out from whatever hole they'd been hiding in. I also saw about a group of about twenty obvious villains that I didn't recognize, all bunched together into a corner. Going by how varied their outfits and appearances were, I didn't think they were actually a team. It looked more like a half dozen groups of two or three that had all migrated together out of shared distrust. Obviously, these were even more groups who had heard of the collapse of the Empire and the imminent (and now finished) demise of the ABB and thought they could jump in to fill the void. I'd lost track of how many of the would-be warlord replacements we'd either chased off or put into prison in recent weeks. Eventually, they started to blend together.

In another part of the room, the Undersiders stood. They were all present, the ones who were still free. Grue, Tattletale, Regent, Freezetag, and Browbeat were there. Plus, they had apparently been joined by a sixth member to make up for the loss of Hellhound, a male in a skintight costume that was pitch black, with a gold design that looked like random swirly lines coming up into a spiral at his chest. He also wore a helmet with a visor that left the lower part of his face exposed, revealing dark skin.

Then there was the Travelers. The three that were left that came out in public, anyway. Trickster looked as normal as he ever did, with his circus ringmaster-like outfit. Ballistic was... standing. He was still missing one of his arms, and kept gazing at Panacea over next to Glory Girl as though trying to will her to come over and fix him without actually speaking up. Genesis, finally, had manifested some kind of very tall, winged and streamlined looking creature with six arms. It stood nine feet in height, with a massive pair of wings that were currently wrapped around her like a cloak.

At the sight of the trio, I glanced toward Marissa to my right. She was standing right beside me, wearing her Sundancer outfit and staring at her former team. I whispered, "Are you all right?"

She hesitated, but nodded. "I'll be okay. I should... go talk to them."

"Don't let them bully you into coming back." I said softly, wanting to take her hand but restraining the urge. "It's still your choice."

"I know." She nodded and glanced to me. "I'll be fine. Go see your team. I'll... catch up with you later."

Marissa walked over to talk to her old friends, and I turned to join the other Wards. Someone was in my way though, and I blinked at the sight of Tattletale in her black and violet costume. "Uh, can I help you?"

The blonde villain's response was a casual, "I just thought I'd say hello."

I rolled my eyes. "Come off it. I know you work for Coil, and I also know that Coil **isn't** Daniel Hebert. If you're fishing for information, don't bother using... whatever your power is." That much was confusing to everyone in the Wards. We knew it had something to do with information collection, and that she pretended that it was telepathy. But that couldn't be right. No one had _actual_ telepathy. "I'll just tell you what my plan is. I'm going to expose who your boss really is."

Tattletale just gave me a knowing, vulpine smile. "Actually, that's more of a goal than a plan. But that's not what I'm here for anyway. Truce, remember? I just thought I'd give you a little advice about your power."

I blinked at that, taken aback. "Huh?"

"Advice about your power." She repeated. "I've been paying attention to the footage the news has of you Wards, and I have a little tip."

"You have a tip... for me... about my power." I said slowly, disbelieving.

The smile never left the other girl's face as she nodded. "Again, truce. It's in my best interest that you know how to use your power to the best of its effect. So when you're running around, using those lines of yours to yank people to safety, don't worry about taking it easy on them."

My head shook in confusion. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I mean, you must know by now that you've got some kind of minor breaker power that protects you from a certain level of damage you should take from being flung around by your own lines. Otherwise you'd have whiplash, dislocated limbs, and who knows what else."

Nodding at that, I frowned. "I know that. So?"

"So," Tattletale gestured with one hand. "It's not just you. Your tether lines extend that breaker effect a short distance around anything you attach them to that holds them together. That's why you can yank a car instead of just pulling off, say, the door the line's attached to. Which means that if you attach the line to someone's clothes, the breaker effect should go around them. So, don't worry about giving someone whiplash by yanking them as fast as you yank yourself."

"My tethers... provide breaker effects to the things they touch?" I echoed, trying to come to terms with what that could mean.

"In a short distance around whatever they're touching, yes." Tattletale nodded. "Impacts are still gonna hurt, so slow them down before you drop them, but you can treat the people you haul out of danger pretty much the same way you treat yourself when you toss them around."

I hesitated to trust what she was saying. But she was right about the truce. If she had really been lying to me, and I ended up hurting someone by following her advice, it would be a massive violation of the hero-villain truce that existed whenever an Endbringer was involved. I didn't think she'd take the risk of having everyone turn on her or the Undersiders just to give me that kind of fake advice.

Finally, I nodded. "Okay, well, thanks. I don't suppose you'll explain how you know that?"

Her answer was just to smile at me mysteriously. "No, but you can trust that everything I said to you is as true as everything you said to me."

With that odd choice of phrasing, she walked away back to her own team. The girl was already gone by the time it registered. I'd said that Mr. Hebert wasn't Coil. Her promise, that everything she said was as true as what I said... was she actually acknowledging that I was right?

Before I could wonder too much, Aegis found me. "Tether, come on. We've got some other Wards to work with." He led me to the much larger group, which included a rather large boy with metal skin. I had to double take at the sight of what looked like half of a fork partially melted into his neck, and part of a chain link fence partially absorbed against his shoulder.

"Tether, this is Weld." Aegis introduced us. "Weld, Tether."

"You're the one that talks all the time." Weld greeted me, extending a hand. "Right?"

Glad that my mask hid my blush at the recognition, I shook his hand. "I don't talk **that** much."

"She's lying." Clockblocker stepped up behind me, both hands on my shoulders. "She's shy during downtime like this, but when we're in a fight, she never shuts up. It's not enough to just beat the bad guys, she has to mock them the whole time too."

Before I could find a hole to hide inside of, the sound of someone clearing his throat came through the room. While that would normally easily be ignored, in this case the someone was Legend, and no one ignored Legend.

Everyone quieted down, turning toward the brown haired man in his blue costume with the electric-flame design in white that was molded to his rather impressive form. He was... fit. Very, very fit. Legend was the epitome of hero, not only in how powerful he was, but in how he looked and acted. Everyone who wanted to be a hero aspired to be Legend. The man looked like a living action hero. Especially now, when he was flanked by the armor-wearing Alexandria, and Eidolon in his green cloak. The three of them together, the Triumverate, were the most powerful group of heroes in the world.

"Thank you." He started. "Thank all of you for coming. No matter our differences, those of us who put them aside for these moments... well, there may be some of you whose choice of actions I will never agree with, but the fact that you're here now, that means something."

"The whole reason we've had time to gather here and make sure that everyone is ready is because of your local Protectorate leader, Armsmaster, and Dragon." He nodded toward our Protectorate leader, while I'd seen the latter outside in one of her much larger suits. "The two of them have been working together and have managed to give us this early alert. If this works out, it may be a turning point against the Endbringers. This is an important one, people. This is one where we find out if an early alert can make a difference."

"With that said, I'm not going to lie to you. Even on a good day, which I hope and pray this is, one-fourth of any defending force will die during an Endbringer attack." The man's voice was solemn, his gaze taking in everyone in the room, leaving no one out. "Looking around this room, on average, one in four of every person here will be dead when the battle is over."

Once that had settled in, the man continued. "If you think I'm saying that to scare you... you're right. This is not a joke. This is one of the most serious and dangerous situations most you may ever face. There's a reason we call them Endbringers, and you deserve to know that this is not a game. Do **not** underestimate Leviathan just because we had a few extra minutes of warning. Do not let your guard down, ever."

"With that said, let's go over what we know. First of all, a few of our Wards are handing out the armbands that Dragon has designed." At his words, I felt a nudge at my side, and turned to see a girl a little older than me, wearing another skintight costume and a visor that left only her mouth and chin exposed. She had a crossbow over one shoulder, and was holding one of the aforementioned bands out to me.

When I took the band, the display on it requested my name. After a momentary hesitation, I brought it closer and said, "Tether."

It was Armsmaster, standing nearby, who explained more. "These bands are meant to adjust over your arm and tighten against your wrist. There is a screen at the top of the band that will note your position on the grid we use, along with the last known location of Leviathan. Use it to either keep your distance or close, depending on your role and abilities. There's also two buttons. The first button, on the left, is used to send messages. Note that your message will not be sent immediately, but will be sorted by a screening program and sent in due time to cut back on distracting chatter. The delay is between three and five seconds. If it's absolutely crucial that you bypass the delay, hold the button down and say 'hard override' before sending the message. But remember, abusing that feature will result in you losing the ability to send any messages at all, so keep the boy who cried wolf in mind."

"Meanwhile, the button on the right is used to send an emergency alert that you need immediate assistance. Press it to alert the nearest extraction or defensive cape to your location and emergency. If it's not an actual emergency, but you need something else such as a better vantage point, or you see an opportunity we can exploit, press both buttons and tell the band what you want. The sorting program will prioritize based on need."

"Finally, the band will also keep track of all casualties, and fatalities. It keeps track of your location, so that you can be retrieved... if possible."

By that time, the bands had all been handed out, and Legend took over speaking once more while everyone was getting them on. He explained about Leviathan's known tactics, his 'afterimage' of water that followed behind every motion he made, the monster's speed turning what would be a simple wave into something with the force of concrete.

This monster was a **powerful** hydrokinetic. While he was dangerous in and of himself, with his size, his speed, and flat refusal to let much actually hurt him, the biggest danger he posed was with the incredible, devastating waves that he could summon. He could, and had, destroy entire cities with them. Or worse. The Canadian Island of Newfoundland was _gone_, thanks to Leviathan.

Since that obviously wasn't bad enough, the city of Brockton Bay had been built over an underground lake. The beast would clearly be attempting to use that to his advantage, weakening the very ground beneath us. If we let the fight go on too long, we could lose the city itself as it fell into the lake, even if we ended up driving the Endbringer away.

Once he was finished talking, Legend took a moment to gaze around at everyone once again. "Thank you. Thank you for being here, for putting everything aside. Now is the time to stand together, to put aside everything else, and to... focus."

We left the building, and started to divide into groups in the parking lot that overlooked the bay. The rain had been coming down in torrents for an hour now, and we could see an even darker stormcloud approaching fast. Leviathan. He'd be here soon.

I made my way to the designated area for movers who could perform search and rescue. It was the best place for me, considering that my warning-lines were going to be tugging me toward people who were in trouble anyway. As I was moving, I felt a hand grab my arm. Turning, I found Clockblocker. "Hey." He said, his voice a little tense. "You're a good friend, Tether. Be careful, okay?"

I swallowed, trying not to show all the fear that I felt. "I will be. You... be careful too."

He nodded, and then I was moving again. I found myself face to face with the red mask of Trickster, and instinctively scowled. "Just so you know," I told him. "If you try anything to get Sundancer back, I'm going to take it as a violation of the truce."

"Is that up to you to decide?" He asked, sounding far too casual.

"Just leave her alone." I muttered, stepping past him to join the rest of the rescue-capes. There were teleporters, fliers, and healers.

Panacea was there as well, and I moved to stand next to her. She glanced my way, and smiled a little. "Hey."

"Hey yourself." I replied, pausing before I added, "Come here often?"

Her mouth opened, then shut before she replied rather wryly. "More often than you'd think."

"Tether, Panacea, good." Armsmaster stepped our way, looking harried. "Tether, you're going to focus on going wherever your danger lines direct you to. Find people in danger, and bring them to Panacea if they need it, so she can get them back into the fight. If you can't reach them in time, send in someone else, a flier or a teleporter. You have direct line of communication to all of our movers that fit that category. Use them well."

Swallowing at that extra bit of responsibility, I managed a weak nod. "Y-yes, sir."

He was already gone, moving on to the next group. I glanced toward my group, and recognized the new guy from the Undersiders. "Who are you? What can you do?"

I recognized his voice. It was the Merchant from the other night, the one who had been running from Pandora. "I ahhh, call me Vacate. My... umm... my power..." He swallowed. "I make... sorta like tunnels in the air, you dig?"

I shook my head. "No, sorry, I don't 'dig'. What do you mean?"

He sighed at the idea of trying to explain. "I pick a location I can see, right? Then this sorta... tunnel appears around me, from where I am to that spot. Everything outside the tunnel's all black and white and shit, and even the shit inside the tunnel's frozen unless I'm touching it when I use the power. Then I just sorta... walk to the other end of the tunnel. If I step outta the tunnel before I reach the other side, it breaks down."

Blinking, I tilted my head. "So... sort of like a directed time-stop. It stops time outside of the little... tunnel so you can walk that far."

"Thassright." He drawled. "Only way I kept ahead of that crazy psycho-cunt."

Apparently he didn't... care that I shouldn't know who he was talking about? Wait, did he? Shaking that off, I focused. "Could you stay with me? We can get people to safety a lot easier with your help."

The guy, Vacate, apparently, shrugged. "I guess. Figured out when psycho-cunt was about to kill me that I never did much with my life before, might as well help now."

"Talk to Panacea." I nodded toward the girl. "Work out where she wants to set up that you can bring people to."

That done, I turned toward the cloud. It was almost on top of us. Closing my eyes, I took the time to whisper a prayer anyone or anything that would listen. Please let me make a difference. Please let me save everyone that I could possibly save.

Please let me do this right.

In the next moment, a handful of black lines appeared. Eyes widening, I spun toward the nearest, seeing the line connected to the out-of-town Ward with the crossbow. I attached a line to the girl and yanked her toward me just as someone let out a cry. My eyes went up to see a wave tall as a building, blocking out the sky, crashing down toward us. A squeal escaped me as I stumbled backward, catching hold of hold of the crossbow girl just before a blue forcefield shimmered into place around both of us and the rest of our little group. The wave **slammed** into it, the impact staggering even through the glowing field.

There were more screams across the lot and down the road from the groups that had been gathered, but who weren't quite as lucky with their defense, and I heard the dispassionate female voice start to speak from my armband. Most of the black lines vanished, but more were taking their places.

"_Krieg deceased, CD-5, Iron Falcon deceased, CD-5, Grue incapacitated, CD-5, Glory Girl, incapacitated, CD-5. Resolute, deceased, CD-5. Parian, deceased, CD-5."_

The voice, with its horrifying announcements, was drowned out by the deafening crash of the gigantic, lizard-like figure hurling himself out of the water to land on the pavement, shattering the cement all around us.

Leviathan... was here.

**7.04**

No. No no no no! As the fatality and injury reports rolled in, I felt my face go ashen behind my mask. The battle had _barely _started, and there were already people dead! Parian wasn't even a fighter. She was just some girl that made big stuffed animals for store grand openings and stuff. It wasn't fair.

**It wasn't fair!**

Red danger lines exploded out from me, stretching into every possible direction, while the thirty foot tall mass murdering creature spun, clearly hunting for his nearest target just before a dark blue laser as wide around as a minivan shot across the monster's brow, making him twitch backwards. A half second later, Alexandria flew down out of the sky, already aimed for the exact spot that Leviathan had flinched back to, and _slammed_ into his face with a blow that sent out a thunderous shockwave that nearly deafened me, but seemed to matter little to the beast.

The red lines were darkening by the second, but two in particular seemed to darken faster, seemed to tug at me harder, than the others. I followed the lines with my eyes, seeing the figures of Tattletale and one of the Boston Wards up on one of the buildings. Instantly, I launched myself that way with a pair of tether-lines. Just as I passed over the two, I caught hold of the backs of their uniforms and hauled them backwards with my own momentum. The pair was dragged along to the opposite side of the roof a second before the monster's tail went crashing through the spot where they had been standing.

Landing on one knee a few feet away from where I had dropped Tattletale and the Ward, I turned. My warning lines were still tugging at me. Another one had started progressing to black, and I took three steps, extended a hand to attach a tether to a balcony on another building, and let it yank me as fast as I dared, the wind whistling around me. Once I reached that balcony, I used another high jump to keep going, following the line that pulled me onward.

Leviathan, startlingly quick, had already abandoned his landing point and was two blocks away, snatching one cape out of the air with a swat of his arm, while his afterimage caught two more that had been flying in to help the first. The monster twisted around, abandoning his grip on the cape that he had caught when Alexandria flew into him with a flurry of punches.

I let go of my latest tether and fell, putting my feet out to take the impact of the fall on my shock-absorbing boots just before I hit the pavement directly next to the figure my line was directing me to. I barely took the time to register that this was one of the newcomer villains before I wrapped my arms around him and launched the two of us upward and back. A heartbeat later, the beast caught hold of Alexandria and threw her at the ground right where the man had been standing. The invulnerable woman drove a deep hole into the ground, just before another wave of water swept in, flooding the hole.

The man I had rescued was saying something, but I didn't stop to listen. A new line had sprung forth, pointed straight down into the hole that Alexandria had fallen into. This one was immediately black, while the others remained red. I didn't know how the woman for whom the invulnerable and superstrong package of superpowers had been named could possibly be in imminent danger of death, but I wasn't going to argue. Seeing Alexandria start to rise out of the water just as Leviathan's foot was coming down, I attached a line to the back of her uniform and to a nearby fire hydrant, hauling her the opposite direction from where she had been rising. The very moment that she was yanked out of the way, the beast's foot came down into a position that would have both knocked the woman back into the hole, and covered it entirely, trapping Alexandria in a watery tomb.

Spinning around to see what had yanked her back, the Triumverate woman glanced up and then called out something. I was already moving rather than taking the time to listen, even as some corner of my mind started squealing and gibbering like a crazy fangirl that _**Alexandria**_ was talking to me.

Something more powerful than awe was driving me onward.

I kept going, kept trying to keep up with the rampaging beast. He'd disappear down a side street, deceptively easy to lose track of given his size, but my danger-lines kept me constantly hot on his heels. Red lines kept appearing, and somehow I had time to save most of them. The lines seemed to be telling me which ones were the most serious, which order I needed to do them in, and they were showing up early enough that as long as I kept moving as quickly as I could, I made it in time. Not for all of them, I wasn't saving **everyone**, because injury reports kept coming across the band. But I was making a difference. Exhausted as I already was, I refused to slow down. Two lines here to haul a pair of blaster capes away from a collapsing pile of rubble from a building that had taken a glancing blow, another line there to yank one of the fliers up and out of the way before an unnoticed wave could catch them unaware. More lines everywhere I turned; every breath I took, every time I blinked there was more to do.

Somehow, I kept up with it. Somehow, I didn't lose my mind. Somehow, I just... knew what order to do everything in, the exact urgency of each warning line coming to me naturally. I should have been overwhelmed, but I wasn't. My mind was sorting through the information, who was where and in how much immediate danger, in ways I had never been able to before. But I wasn't going to complain now.

Eventually, I landed on the ground next to where Vacate had apparently become frozen in terror. The black line that directed me to him was getting darker by the second, before fading away once I snatched hold of his arm and hurled the both of us sideways just in time to avoid the swipe of Leviathan's tail.

As we landed hard, rolling on the rough ground, I saw another of the red lines turn black, and instinctively knew it was the monster's next target.

"H-h-he's... he's too st-strong... he's... he's... f-fuck... fuck..." Vacate was stammering, petrified with fear as he knelt where he'd fallen after my tether had released him.

I didn't have time for this. Raising my gauntlet-covered hand, I smacked him across the face. Then I shouted and pointed. "Tunnel! There! Now!"

He obeyed, catching my arm just before his power sprang up around us.

His description had been apt, I noted as I looked around. The 'tunnel' was roughly wide enough for two large men to walk abreast, and was probably about seven feet tall. Everything outside of the tunnel was frozen in mid-motion, the color faded to black and white. Additionally, everything within the tunnel, including a pair of unknown capes clearly running away from an incoming wave, was frozen as well, though remained in color.

"I touch anything or anybody inside the tunnel before I collapse it, I can bring 'em back up to normal speed." He took the time to explain. "Like that New Wave chick with the hot ass down there at the end."

I looked again. Sure enough, Crystal was at the far end of the tunnel, frozen in mid-step, her arm outstretched as though she had been about to summon one of her signature lasers. The black line was directing me her way.

On the principle of the thing, I elbowed him.

"Ow, what the fuck was that for?" He complained.

"Her name is Laserdream, not 'New Wave chick with the hot ass'. Get your head out of the gutter and into the battle." I said, while trotting down the line. "Grab those two-" I indicated the pair of unknown villains that were fleeing the wave. "-and bring them with us."

While the former Merchant thug did that, complaining the whole time that I was just jealous that he'd been focused on Laserdream's rear instead of mine (Ewww), I used a tether to haul myself all the way to the end of the tunnel, stopping where Crystal was. A glance showed me what she was doing. The unconscious Glory Girl was on the ground just behind Laserdream, who was clearly protecting her injured cousin. Slightly beyond that, I could see Penance and Defiant being knocked aside by a slightly smaller wave.

Touching Crystal did nothing. Apparently only Vacate could bring someone out of their frozen state. I glanced back just as he and the two villains that I didn't know came jogging up. Ignoring the pair, who were already glaring at me, I focused on ex-Merchant. "Bring her out of it, but don't collapse the tunnel yet."

With a shrug, he reached out. His hand wavered in mid-air as though it had been headed somewhere else in order to bring her out of it before I growled at him. Then he adjusted and touched Laserdream's shoulder, muttering that I was a spoilsport. Honestly, I could have just let him go for it so that Crystal could melt his face off, but I needed him intact at the moment.

Crystal slumped a little bit as she was brought out of the frozen state. It seemed like some kind of purposeful effect, stopping any kind of momentum and briefly numbing the muscles to stop someone from being unfrozen and having their forward motion instantly carry them out of the tunnel. Useful, that.

"What—huh?" The older girl twisted, until she saw me. "Tether, what happened?"

I jerked a thumb toward Vacate. "His power. Teleport... tunnel... time... freeze... thing, whatever. Point is, he's useful. Annoying, but useful."

Grinning cockily, the guy rocked back on his heels and nodded while drawling. "Heeeelll yeah I'm—wait, what's that 'bout annoying? Now listen, jealous little-"

I ignored him. Now wasn't the time. "Laserdream, as soon as he drops the tunnel, can you grab Glory Girl and fly her out of here?"

She nodded. "I'll take her to Panacea. She—she'll want to fix her."

"You." I pointed at Vacate. "Stay with her and go to Panacea. Every time someone brings her wounded capes, you make a tunnel around Panacea and the capes. That way her healing will seem to be instantaneous. It might not mean more than a couple minutes difference..."

"But a couple minutes is an eternity right now." Crystal finished. "Good idea. What are you doing?"

"Me?" I looked back out to where I could still see my warning-lines stretching out in every direction. "I'm going to go save people."

Suiting word to action, the second that the tunnel went down and time resumed for everyone else, I used a pair of lines from my gauntlets to literally throw myself at the nearest pair that the black lines were leading to: Trickster and Assault. My tether lines caught hold of the pair and hurled them away from each other just before Leviathan landed where they had been. At the same time, I focused three more tethers onto the chests of a group of hovering capes and forcibly propelled them backwards, away from the swipe of the monster's tail. And an instant later, I crashed bodily into the figure of Battery, carrying the both of us just out of reach of the Endbringer's claw swipe.

I was moving as fast as I could, every line pulling me to another person in danger. In the background, I could see the fight continuing as we threw everything we had at the monster, only for him to keep moving. The destruction was spreading. Another of his massive tidal waves had blown through most of the buildings along docks area and the boardwalk, shattering glass and mortar alike. All I could do was pray that everyone was out of there.

Water and debris filled the streets, and it was getting harder to choose which warning lines to follow first. There was just too much danger. I had to pick and choose, prioritizing the best I could.

A miniature sun, roughly the size of a small car, rose above the rooftops a few streets over, letting me know where Marissa was. I yanked myself that way, coming in to land next to the small group that was gathered in the parking lot behind a grocery store so that I could breathe for a moment.

Sundancer had been joined, somewhat surprisingly, by a couple of my teammates. Vista was there, along with Clockblocker. Even more surprising was the presence of Freezetag, from the Undersiders. They were all watching Mars direct the mini-sun upward while it continued to grow.

"We've got a plan." Dennis informed me. "How's it going on your side?"

I panted, leaning over to catch my breath. "Busy. He's not stopping."

"We'll stop him." Vista replied, her mouth set in a firm line.

"Damn straight." The voice I barely recognized came from Freezetag, of course. "That son of a bitch hurt my brother. He's going down." She paused, before adding in a somewhat contemplative tone, "I don't think I was supposed to call him my brother. Oops." Her hands waved vaguely. "Truce, pretend you didn't hear that."

"How long until your plan's ready?" I asked, wincing at the sound of more destruction, more names being read off by the armband.

"Just a couple minutes." Sundancer answered through gritted teeth. "Needs... to be... bigger."

Right then, the digitized voice from the armband announced, "Shelter at Heritage and Euphoria under attack."

I whipped around at that, eyes widening. Sure enough, I could see a collection of flying capes hovering above another street two blocks over, where the shelter was, pummeling Leviathan below them to get his attention. "My family's at that shelter." Almost on cue, danger lines sprang up, at least a dozen of them, all directing me toward the area where the shelter was.

"Go." Clockblocker gave me a little push. "Go help them. We've got this."

Nodding, I launched outward once more, catching a line against the next building over to haul myself that way.

As I landed on the roof and adjusted, I saw the group of flying capes, Penance and Glory Girl included, spreading out. They'd lost sight of Leviathan, as quick as the beast was, which at least meant that he wasn't menacing the shelter anymore.

And yet, the danger lines weren't going down. As I stood on the edge of the roof for a better view, I could see the shelter below me. The doors had been partially dented in, and I could see the near-river of water from one of the Endbringer's last attacks that was still flooding in through the opening that he had torn. In their hurry to chase the monster down, the other capes hadn't noticed.

The people in that shelter were going to drown. Quickly, I hit the button on my band. "Hard Override, the shelter on Heritage is flooding, they're in trouble."

Silence was only response I got. Blinking down at the band, I found the screen dark. My eyes widened and I hit both buttons to no avail. My armband had suddenly gone dead. It had been working barely a minute ago, what happened?!

Okay, I was going to have to do it myself. I could do that. I could get the people out. Grimacing, I readied myself to jump that way.

Then it happened. Before I could move, another set of dark lines sprang up, yanking my attention that way. I spun at the urgency of the lines, only to see them leading back toward the street where the others were.

Leviathan was on the opposite street, actually hunched over as he charged on all fours down the road, clearly intent on the spot just below the hovering sun. He was going after them.

I looked back toward the flooding shelter, my eyes wide with panic, then toward the street where my friends were, then to my dark and silent armband. "No no no, please, work. WORK! Damn it, somebody get over here!" I called, then screamed at it. "**SOMEONE HELP ME SAVE THEM! I CAN'T DO IT BY MYSELF!"**

Tears of exhaustion, shame, and growing realization flooded my eyes and blinded me as my desperate pleas went unanswered. Meanwhile, the lines, into the shelter, and to Marissa, Dennis, and the others, were already black. I had no more time. No time to delay, no time to waste, no time to think.

No time to save both.

I had to choose.

**7.05**

For a single, heartrending second, I stood in frozen indecision. My death-lines were tugging me in both directions, and it felt like they were literally ripping me in two. Maybe that would have been preferable to actually making this choice.

If I moved to save the people in the shelter, including my family, I would be leaving my teammates and friends to their deaths to Leviathan. If I moved to save my friends, I would abandoning the people in the shelter to their own deaths from the flooding water. I would be _abandoning people to die while trapped in a confined space_, just like Taylor.

Whatever choice I made, people would die because of that choice, because of what I didn't do..

No. I did not accept this. I **would not accept it.** Presented with an impossible scenario, I would _change_ the scenario.

I turned to face the running monster. My eyes narrowed, and I extended my arms, choosing my target before I began to manifest lines. Not one line, or two, but four of them, two attached from each gauntlet, to a different part of the road.

"You..." I addressed Leviathan as the massive creature came running straight toward the invisible lines I had set up. "Aren't..." I took a breath and let it out while leaning forward and down a little. "Wanted..." As the beast raced over the road where my lines were, I _heaved_ backward and up, retracting the lines with as much force as I could muster. My words turned to a scream from the effort I was exerting, and my vision seemed to tunnel down a single point, light and dark spots dancing across my eyes. "_**HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE!"**_

It worked. Even as a blinding spike of pain tore through my head, the pavement all around the street beneath Leviathan tore_up_, a large section of the road itself literally being hauled into the air, bringing the monster with it. And even through the pain and nausea that threatened to drop me into oblivion, I still had the distinct pleasure of seeing the beast that threatened to destroy our city kicking and flailing comically as it flew through the air uncontrollably.

I released the lines and dove sideways off the roof. As I fell, I attached another line between one of the larger flying chunks of pavement and the area just in front of the shelter entrance, yanking it out of the air so that it crashed down directly in the path of the rushing flood, splitting it off to both sides of the damaged hatch so that the water would run around the shelter itself. Most of the black lines that had been leading into the building vanished, or faded down to a light red to indicate injury.

Then I hit the ground, so focused on the lines that I had going that I hadn't set up anything to slow my fall. Pain lanced through my body as I felt the bones through my arm and hip break from the impact, the air rushing out of my lungs in a whoosh to leave me wheezing helplessly. But it was negligible compared to the pain in my head from the effort that I had put into launching Leviathan.

As it turns out, catapulting an Endbringer through the air is a really good way of getting people's attention. There were more capes flying back this way, even as the giant monster crashed through the building that I had been standing on, collapsing the roof in.

Still undamaged, the beast rolled off the building. I saw its tail lashing down toward me, but I had nothing left. Pain blinded me from every part of my body at the very thought of trying to move, and in that second, all I could do was stare at the descending tail and wait for the inevitable while telling myself that at least I had done everything I could.

Then something grabbed me, hauling me off the ground before leaping away from that spot. I let out a cry of agony as the motion sent shards of pain through me, my vision dimming slightly before I managed to focus. "Pan... dora...?"

We were flying, hovering a dozen feet off the ground while the monster's tail lashed the spot where I had been. "You are not to die now."

In the next moment, three separate laser blasts tore into Leviathan, just before a missile launched from Dragon's suit blew one of his feet out from under him. The reinforcements had arrived.

Meanwhile, I stared up at the still hovering Pandora, feeling lost. "You... can't fly."

"We cannot." She confirmed. "Several of the parahumans who have been killed in this battle did possess such an ability."

My mouth opened and then shut. Trying to figure out what that meant made my head hurt. "You... You can take... people's powers...? Wait... You... truce..."

"We did not violate the truce." She said firmly. "We absorbed only the remains of those parahumans who were already deceased."

Something still felt wrong about that, terribly wrong, but I couldn't think. "Powers... you use them... you take them..."

"We are not, by default, capable of using the powers of parahumans we have absorbed. To do so, we must create a special body which possesses none of our ordinary abilities, but instead, is capable of using the powers of one of the parahumans that we have previously absorbed. This incarnation is incapable of biological reconstruction, form-changing, or anything else our default form is able to do, but it does contain the powers previously used by one of the now-deceased parahumans. If its genetic structure is eliminated entirely before it can be reabsorbed into our collective, the specific abilities it contains will be lost."

Leviathan was staggering, but still moving. I lifted a hand, flinching at the pain. "You... the other parts of you can... stop him... eat him..."

Her head shook. "We have attempted to. It... did not go as planned. Three of ourselves were lost in the attempt."

My vision was still going in and out, the pain almost overwhelming. Still, I could see the injury lines. "Pa... Pandora..." I managed, lifting my undamaged hand to clutch the clone's arm. "You... you want to be a real person? You want to be... real..." Pointing toward the shelter, I pleaded, "Save them. There's people trapped in there, hurt, maybe worse. Go and help them. That's what a real person does. They help when there's trouble. See? Look. Villains. Heroes. Both sides trying to stop this monster. You want to be real, you want to be your own person, _**help them**_**."  
><strong>  
>Pandora gazed at the shelter doors, then to me, and seemed to consider. Then we lowered until we were on the ground on the far side of the building, and she laid me down on the ground almost gently before flying off toward the damaged entrance, leaving me where I was.<p>

As I lay there on my side, from the corner of my eye, I saw Marissa's sun. It had reached the size of a small house, settling into a spot above the large parking lot at the end of the street. The pavement was melting beneath the heat, turning into a black river of sludge.

I was confused, why were they putting the sun so far away?

Then, before my bleary eyes, two figures began to run straight toward the murderous beast. Clockblocker and Freezetag. They were carrying what looked like... was that a pile of coats? What the...?

The towering monster spotted them, of course, and turned to lift his foot and stomp downward. I would have screamed out a warning, but the lack of any warning line confused me. As I stared, Dennis swept one of the coats that the two of them were carrying up, and then the pair dropped to crouch behind the coat as it hung frozen in the air. Leviathan's foot was blocked by the time-stopped coat, which shielded the two hidden beneath it.

Another swift series of attacks from the nearby Penance drew the monster's attention. As soon as he looked that way and lashed out, Clockblocker and Freezetag moved again. They kept approaching that way, Dennis using his power on the coats that they carried to shield them from any counter attack, while the other capes focused on continually distracting the beast.

Then they were there, and the Undersider villain slapped her hand against the Endbringer's foot. Instantly, he froze in place.

Wait, no. He wasn't frozen completely. Only his lower half, his legs and tail, were frozen. Somehow, Freezetag's power wasn't quite enough to cover his entire form. He was just too big.

His legs, however, remained firmly locked in place. As the beast flailed his arms, Dennis and Freezetag retreated, while the space between Leviathan and the miniature sun at the end of the street abruptly shrank down to a tiny fraction of what it had been. Vista, arms outstretched as she stood next to the toppled building, narrowed the space between the monster and the damaging heat. Within seconds, the distance had shrunk so much that the sun was practically right on top of the partially-frozen monster.

In the next second, the Endbringer was pummeled by attacks from a dozen directions as more capes with ranged abilities descended on the scene. I saw Legend hovering in the air, unleashing so many lasers that I lost sight of the man himself. To his left there was another flying cape that was conjuring some kind of massive arrow made of fire, which he sent flying into the monster.

All around Leviathan, more attacks were tearing into Leviathan's all but invulnerable hide, while his back half was all but engulfed by the sun, which Marissa had been growing by the moment. No one could get near the beast, but those that could hit him from where they were continued to unleash everything they had while he was locked to the ground.

Before my eyes, more black lines rose, connecting to every cape that I could see. I stared, confused. No, this wasn't right. What could hurt them?

Then I saw it. A wave, so large that it dwarfed any of the others, came rushing through the city streets. It tore through buildings like so much paper, carrying rubble and debris with it. It was so enormous, moving so fast, with the force of a runaway train, that anyone caught in its path was unlikely to survive the experience. Under my horrified gaze, the wave blew threw an apartment building.

And no one had noticed. They were so intent on hurting Leviathan while they had an unimpeded chance, that they weren't paying attention to their surroundings.

Ignoring the pain, I attached lines to each and every one of the people I could see, along with myself. The thought of what I was about to do made me whimper, but I couldn't stop. I wouldn't stop. The lines all _shot_ upward, launching myself along with every cape present as high into the air as I could manage. The agony that swept through my head from the effort was utterly blinding. My vision went in and out a couple of times as my body went flying. Somewhere below, I saw the disjointed sight of Leviathan's top half being carried away by the wave.

_That's right, run_, I thought, a little deliriously as I fell, in too much pain to focus on lines, or the fact that when I hit the ground, I might not wake up again.

Then, my eyes closed, and I knew nothing else.

My vision swam back into focus, and I felt a warm hand against my bare, unmasked face. "Mmm... Mars... what...?" I blinked a few times, but it wasn't Marissa sitting beside the cot that I found myself laying on. It was Panacea.

I had a brief moment to wonder how I knew that it wasn't Pandora, but another voice distracted me. "I'm here, Madison." I saw Sundancer, still in costume, standing on the other side of the room.

"I... is it over?" I asked, hopefully.

The two girls looked to one another, and then Amy rose. "She'll be... she'll be okay. I fixed the damage. I need to go and help others." She hesitated, clearly uncertain. "Or I could... help you... talk."

Marissa's head shook. "I'll do it. Go, you've got more people to take care of."

I saw Amy glance back at me. She paused and then murmured. "I'm sorry, Mads." Then she was gone, through the door.

"What's she sorry about?" I started to ask Marissa. "What's going on?"

She sat heavily in the chair that Amy had left, taking a moment to tug her mask off. The pain that I saw on the other girl's face distracted me. "What's wrong?" I tried to sit up. "What happened? Is he still here? I can help, I can-"

"Stop, Mads." Her hand found my shoulder to stop me from rising. "Just stop, it's... the fight's over. Leviathan's gone. He tore his top half free and let that wave carry what was left of him away. It's the most damage anyone's ever done to an Endbringer."

That brought a tired smile to my face. "That's... good. He's done. It's over."

Swallowing, Marissa nodded. "Yeah. It's good. There was a lot of damage to the city, but... you saved a lot of people that would have died. They're... really happy, Madison. Everyone's proud of you."

I stared, confused by the disconnect between what she was saying, and the look on her face. "Mars, what is it? What's wrong?"

She flinched. "You saved a lot of people in that shelter, Mads. Pandora, she saved even more. There was panic down there, and still a lot of water. They were trampling each other, but it would have been a lot worse if you... and she... hadn't done something."

My head shook slowly. "You're still not making sense. We saved—wait, a... a lot of people? That's not everyone. That's not everybody in the shelter."

"No." She said quietly. "It's not everybody."

My voice was hollow. "Who?"

For a moment, Marissa said nothing. But then, she didn't have to. She didn't have to say it. I already knew. I turned my head away, the tears coming already. "Don't." I said, unable to make any more words come through the lump in my throat. I didn't want her to say it. As long as she didn't say the words, it wasn't real.

Moving from the chair to the bed to sit next to me, I felt her arms encircle me as she said the words that I'd known were coming. The words that made my entire world collapse in on itself. Amy had taken the physical pain away, but after those words were spoken, nothing in my life would ever be the same, or whole, again. I'd done everything I could. I'd done everything right. I'd fought through every bit of pain, through every setback, through the loss of my armband and through the impossible scenario that I'd been faced with. I'd beaten it. I'd beaten them.

But I still lost this.

"It's your parents, Madison." She said, her arms tightening around me as I went limp with shock. "They didn't make it. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."

**Interlude 7 – Battery**

"Who do you think you are?"

Samantha O'Connell, more commonly known as Battery, held the phone so tightly in her hand that she was almost afraid that it might snap in her grip, keeping her voice low in spite of her anger. This was one conversation that she didn't want anyone else to be privy to even half of.

It had been a day since Leviathan's attack, and most things were still disorganized chaos. She had come into the hospital, along with her husband, in civilian clothes to see what they could do to help before it was time to patrol. Then this phone call had come.

The calm, measured tones of Doctor Mother, leader—founder-or whatever she was, of Cauldron, came through in stark contrast to her own clear frustration. "I'm sorry?"

"You heard me." Sam glanced over her shoulder at the nearby closed door, making sure she was still alone in this room in the hospital. It wasn't a patient's room, those were all full. Instead, it was some kind of break room. Given how busy every doctor and nurse was at the moment, there weren't likely to be any 'breaks' for a long time. "Who the **fuck** do you think you are? Do you have any idea what just happened? We're dealing with the aftermath of an Endbringer assault. _Two of our members, __**my friends**__ are dead._ Our main healer is still trying to help people after losing her mother, and one our Wards lost both of her parents when they should have been safe in a shelter. We drove the sonofabitch off, but we're still coping. We still lost a **lot**. And you choose now to call in and ask for a fucking FAVOR?" It was all she could do not to turn and pitch the phone at the wall.

"I'm afraid, dear, that you're suffering under two misconceptions," the irritatingly calm woman's voice replied. "First, I am not asking for a favor in exchange for some future service. I am calling in a favor that is already owed to us. Second, you seem to believe the repayment I am going to request is at odds with the... coping that you mention."

Frowning, Sam walked to the window and gazed out at the parking lot below. There were so many injured that the medical staff had actually set up tents to move the less critical patients to, rather than take up hospital bed space. She could see people rushing every which way, trying to bring some order to the chaos that the Endbringer had created. "You're saying this favor will actually help?"

"In a manner of speaking." The other woman replied. "The Ward that you mentioned, the one who lost her parents."

"Tether, the newest member," Sam explained, distractedly. "What about her?"

Doctor Mother's response came with an almost too-casual tone. "She'll be taken into the system. Probably given a pair of foster parents who are already part of the PRT in one fashion or another, most likely a clerk or some other low-level paper-pusher, just to say that she has parental supervision."

Turning away from the window, unable to stand looking at all the injured people and think everyone who hadn't made it, Samantha frowned. "What's your point? Where are you going with this?"

"We believe that the girl would be better suited in a... different, more encouraging and stimulating environment."

"I still don't see what-" Blinking, Sam shook her head reflexively. "Wait. Wait, you're not trying to say... you don't think..."

"Our final favor, our final request before our business is over," Doctor Mother confirmed. "Is for you to take the girl in yourself. No one will deny you, not with every other bit of business that needs to be handled in the wake of such a tragedy. If you say that you wish to become responsible for her well-being, they won't ask any questions."

"You have got to be kidding me." Samantha felt her confusion rising. "Why the hell do you care about who takes care of the poor kid? You don't—wait, she isn't one of yours, is she? Because I thought she got her power-"

"She is not one of ours," the woman replied, still aggravatingly calm and measured. "Our interests remain our own, and the duties we need of you now do not require knowledge of them. Suffice to say, she is unaware of our existence, and it shall remain that way indefinitely."

Feeling her confusion only worsening, Sam put a hand to her forehead. She wanted to _grieve_ god damn it, not stand here and debate with this woman. "What, exactly, are we talking about here?"

"Take legal custody of the girl. She will be sixteen in a few days. Care for her, protect her as best as you can, and... be there for when she inevitably needs someone. Be responsible for her until her eighteenth birthday. At that time, our business will be considered complete, and you need never hear from us again should that be your wish."

It took Sam several long seconds of drawing in breaths and letting them out, mind racing, before she could respond. "Take care of her. Nothing else. No experiments, no tests, no hurting her-"

"Nothing of the sort," Doctor Mother confirmed. "Simply attend to her needs, provide shelter, food, care... for two years."

"I'd have to convince Ethan." Samantha replied weakly, leaning against the nearest wall for support. Her husband, convincing him to take in a sixteen year old girl, without explaining why she really had to do it... The man drove her crazy at times, but she still hated lying to him. It made her feel sick deep inside. She loved him, in spite of how much he tended to annoy her... or perhaps, in some ways, because of that. Lying to the man she loved, the man she had pledged herself to despite all of their differences and difficulties, was **wrong**.

"I'm certain you will find a way," the other woman replied simply, confidently. "Do we have an agreement? Two years of caring for one who needs your help, and then we are even."

Sam didn't answer at first. She was trying to think of what loophole or twist the Cauldron woman was going to play in order to keep her under their thumb for longer. So far the favors they'd asked for in exchange for the powers they'd given her had been mild. Join the Wards and then the Protectorate, which she would have done anyway, and deliver a package. The idea that the third and final boon they would call in would be as simple and innocuous as taking care of a sixteen year old girl for a couple of years was... rather unthinkable.

Finally, she sighed and gave up. "Assuming I can talk Ethan into it, yes, we have a deal."

Her husbands arms came around her the moment that she joined him outside on the patio where the staff came to smoke. Ethan, otherwise known as Assault, hugged her almost painfully tight. "Puppy." He smelled her hair while whispering the name that she had hated for so long. Still hated, from anyone but him. It had begun as a mocking, condescending name when they had been enemies, when she had been intent on catching his villainous-self. But in the years since, it had become... special. From him. Anyone else who tried using it generally ended up with a wastebasket dumped over their heads.

"Where were you?" He asked after releasing her.

And now came the lying that she hated so much. "Thinking."

His eyes softened, and he took her hand. "About Hannah and Robin?"

The real names for Miss Militia and Velocity sent a spike of pain through Sam's heart, and she ducked her head. Dead. Her teammates, her friends, were gone. Three in a very short time-span, if one counted Triumph. She did. She counted them all. All the ones she failed, in spite of her power.

Taking her silence for confirmation, Ethan embraced her once more. "It's the fucking Endbringer, puppy. We cut the damned thing in half and it still crawled away."

"Don't." Samantha shook her head, even as she was held against her husband's chest. "Don't talk about that... that thing. It doesn't deserve the attention. Let's focus on... on the people who matter."

Sighing, he released his hold on her and kissed her forehead, then her cheek, then her mouth. It was a soft, gentle kiss that ended too soon for both of their liking. But now wasn't the time, no matter how much she wanted to feel _alive_.

The very thought brought bile to her throat. Why? Her friends were **dead**. Why would she even think about... that? She was pathetic. She was a waste of a person, a terrible, lying human being.

"Puppy—Sam." He used her real name that time, tilting her chin up with a finger. "It wasn't your fault. Everyone... we all chose to go out there. We do what we can because it's the right thing."

"You do it because you think it's fun." She shot back automatically, tiredly.

The smile that came to his face was far weaker than his normal grin. "That's right, normally. It _is_ fun. Always has been. But things like this... no, this isn't fun. And I hate seeing you like this. Blaming yourself."

Her head shook. "No, I... I just... they're gone. They're gone forever. They're gone, Brandish is gone, and that... that poor Parian. Hell, even Krieg and Stormtiger. They were murderous assholes, but they fought. And the... the boy from the Undersiders."

"Heartbreaker's kid?" Assault supplied.

"I don't think we ever confirmed that Regent was Heartbreaker's son." She pointed out. "And now, well now it hardly matters." Sighing, she turned to look out at the rubble of the building across the street that had been leveled by one of Leviathan's attacks. "How many out-of-towners did we lose? How many of the people who came to help us are dead because they stepped up?"

"Too many." He replied. "Fuck, it was the lowest death count of any Endbringer attack ever, if we take the Smurf's eventual victims into account. But it was still too god damn many."

"Too many." Sam agreed. She had known some of them, by reputation if nothing else. Good Neighbor, Fiercling, Iron Falcon, Quark, Resolute... too many names.

They stood quietly like that for a few moments, both lost in thought, yet comfortable with one another so that constant words were not needed. Finally, she broke the silence. "I want to do something to help. I want to... contribute."

Fuck. Fuck, why did she have to lie to him? For a brief, manic moment, Samantha considered just telling her husband the truth. But the thought of what Cauldron might do to him if he knew silenced this fantasy.

Ethan raised an eyebrow. "You say that like you have something in mind."

She looked away, suppressing her frown. "Tether. She lost her parents. She was probably one of the biggest factors to our 'lowest death count', did you _see_ what she was doing out there?"

He nodded. "That danger sense of hers, however it works, it made a lot of difference. She was everywhere. She... she did a lot."

"And what's her reward?" Samantha was bitter. "She gets told her parents are dead. It's not fair." There was no lying now. She really did feel horrible for the girl, and she definitely _hated_ the damn Endbringer.

Seeing the anger, the frustration, on her face, Ethan put his hand against her cheek. "I'm sorry, puppy. I wish—tell me how I can help. Tell me what we can do. You said something about the girl."

Sighing, Sam nodded. "She lost her parents, so they're gonna toss her into the system."

His head shook. "Doesn't she have a brother?"

"He's not really a factor." She said, biting her lip. "He's a local college student, was living at home, can barely take care of himself. No way he can do anything for her. I don't think he even knows about her powers. Which means she'll go into the system. You know how that works. They'll get some rubber stamp clerk or something from one of the PRT offices to sign the papers calling themselves her guardians, and then they'll just throw her at the Wards to deal with. She'll be lucky if she sees her supposed 'guardians' more than once a day."

Blinking uncertainly, Ethan nodded. "Right, it's a pain in the ass, but what's that got to do with us?"

Hesitating, Sam doubted herself for a moment. She could call Doctor Mother back, tell her that Ethan hadn't gone for it.

In the end, it wasn't fear of the Cauldron woman that stopped her. It was the realization that she really, truly _did_ want Tether to be taken care of. If she didn't do it, the girl's **best case scenario** was the unloving, uncaring situation that she had described. The much more likely, and much worse, scenario was that Cauldron would simply find someone else to do it. They would pick someone else to take the girl in, and who knew whether _that someone_ would actually care what happened to Tether beyond the paycheck they were getting from their masters?

"We should take her in." Samantha blurted out loud.

Ethan leaned back to stare at her. "Err, what? You want to—you want to what?"

She was blushing, wilting a little under his intent, questioning gaze. "Her life's gonna suck enough without being thrown into the supposed are of some in-name-only 'guardian'. She deserves better than that. I mean, maybe it's wrong, maybe it's dumb, but... but I don't care. I don't want her to get shuffled away and forgotten."

"Wow." Ethan rocked back on his heels a bit. "I knew we'd eventually talk about having kids, but I wasn't expecting the conversation to revolve around someone that's almost old enough to drive."

"You hate the idea?" She asked, wincing a little.

He hesitated, but shook his head. "Didn't say that. You're right, the girl does need... someone. Losing your parents... that's... it's rough. I... you think they'd go for it?"

"No way they'd deny us." Sam confirmed. Especially not if Cauldron wanted it done. As unlikely as it was that anyone would object to them taking one of their responsibilities off their hands, with Cauldron involved, that possibility dropped to near absolute zero.

Ethan went quiet again, considering. "We're not that much older than she is." He pointed out.

"I'm not." Samantha corrected with a nod. "You're ancient."

He made a face at that. "I'm not old."

"Ancient. She'll have to call you Grandpa." She repeated, winking. Her words were weak, the teasing mostly just them going through the motions. Even as some horrible, painful part of her heart tore a little at the thought of smiling after so much death, she leaned up to gently kiss his cheek. "Are we doing this?"

After another moment of silence, he nodded. "If they'll let us, and if... if she agrees. I'd rather talk to the girl first, make sure she doesn't have anything else... you know... lined up."

Swallowing the lump in her throat, Samantha nodded. "Okay. Then... then let's go adopt a sixteen-year-old hormonal girl with superpowers."

Assault actually _whimpered_. "Is it too late to change my mind?"


	8. Arc 8: Being

_**Notes: **_Moka-girl – Whoops, thanks! I think I fixed that properly this time.

LordAnarchy666 – Considering I've never seen DBZ other than a fair bit of the abridged series on youtube (and that was awhile ago), I promise that's a coincidence. ;) Still, glad you like it!

Fazed343 – I have no idea how this story is coming out this quickly either. It just won't stop. I'm glad people are enjoying it.

Starfox5 – Hey thanks, glad you enjoyed the Endbringer fight as well as the little prisoner transfer shenanigans. ;)

**8.01**

I was alone.

The house that I had grown up in, the only real home I knew, lay silent and dark as I stood in the kitchen, listening to the echoes of ghosts that would live forever within these walls.

Slowly, I stepped away from the backdoor and said quietly, "I'm here." My voice was soft and small against the deafening silence of a home whose family was gone.

Reaching out, I brushed my fingers along the kitchen table. My spot. My seat. My fingers found a the tiny groove that had always been there. I remembered a time when I was six, lining peas up along that groove, using it to hold them steady and then making a bet with Trevor that my line of peas would stay in place longer than his.

Stupid. Ridiculous little nothings that kept coming to mind. My eyes moved to the kitchen sink, then to the red and yellow flowered stool that lay in the space between the fridge and the counter. Unused for years, with piles of cleaning supplies and other knickknacks stacked on top of it, but at one time the stool had been used every time it was my turn to clean the dishes. First it had been set on the left side of the sink so that I could dry them while Trevor washed, and later, when I was older yet still not quite tall enough, it had been on the right side so that I could do the scrubbing.

An image came to mind: Dad using his foot to slide the stool across to its spot at the sink, then hoisting me off the ground, flipping me over in the air, and setting me down on the stool.

I turned away from the sink, leaving the kitchen as I took my phone from my pocket, using the speed dial without looking before bringing the phone to my ear. As usual, I reached voice-mail.

"It's me again,Trev." After speaking, I went silent for a moment, standing in the dark living room. "I'm... I'm at the house right now. I... listen, I know you're alive, because the emergency responders treated you for bruises. But then you disappeared. And... and I don't know where you went."

Slowly, I walked over to the comfortable armchair that had been my father's, reaching a hand out to brush over it tenderly. "Mr. Tourney said you called the college to drop your classes, and... and the neighbors said you were here for an hour yesterday, during the... while the... funeral..."

Turning away from the chair and blinking rapidly, I continued, "Listen, Trevor... I know. I know it—we-we haven't been that... close since... since you started college. You were trying to be your own person, and I was... well, I was a spoiled brat. But... but I need you—we... I think we need each other. Mom and-" My throat closed up, but I pushed on. If I didn't get this out, I never would. "Mom and Dad are gone, Trev. They're gone and... and we're alive. But I haven't seen you since... then... and I don't know what's going on. I don't know... why you're... why you haven't..."

I reached the stairs, gripping the banister tightly as I walked up them. "I don't blame you for not showing up to the funeral, Trevor. I... maybe I did a little, but now I just... I just want to talk. We can't just... we can't just drift. We're still here. We can still be... we can keep... Please, Trev... call me back. I... I don't know what else to do. I'll... I'll call you again tomorrow. Pick up this time... please?"

Sighing, I hit the disconnect on the phone, then put it away. For a few moments, I stood in the dark hallway, just outside of my brother's room. Dreading what I would see, I slowly reached up to push the door open. Just above my head, the little bell that Trevor had set up so that he'd know if I ever tried to sneak into his room made its pleasant jingling noise. Even that was enough to make the lump thicken in my throat, and I closed the door before slowly pressing it open once more. Just so that I could hear that stupid bell. For a time, it had been the bane of my existence. I had wanted _so badly_ to get into Trevor's room because of this wicked stinky jello prank that I'd thought up. But the bell was loud enough to let everyone in the house hear it.

I'd ended up using the stinky jello on Taylor.

After opening Trevor's door again, I let my hand slip inside and flipped on the light switch before stepping inside. As I turned in a circle to take in my surroundings, I let out a low sigh. "Oh Trevor..."

As I'd feared, the room was mostly empty. The blankets and sheets had been stripped off the bed, the closet stood open with about half the clothes missing, Trevor's laptop was gone from the desk, and all of his drawers were standing open and had obviously been gone through.

I left his room, walking past the bathroom to my own bedroom. That door was open, and I took a moment to gaze at the Looney Tunes poster on the front of it. When my eyes closed, I could picture myself in the store, begging my mother to buy the poster. I'd seen it while flipping through the various options, and had immediately latched onto it. I'd wanted it so badly that I'd promised to vacuum the living room every week for a month if I could have it.

Leaving the poster behind, I stepped into my room. Someone, likely a PRT clerk, had gone through my closet to find clothes that I could wear for the last couple of days, and to the funeral. My drawers were open like Trevor's had been, but my things had clearly been gone through with more care, and in less of a hurry.

My eyes found my unmade and ruffled bed, my vanity table with the pictures of friends and various celebrities and superheroes taped all over the sides, and the closet where my clothes were. For a minute, I just stood and watched all of these pieces of what my life had been up to this point. I watched these objects, these reminders of a family I didn't have, these shards of a perfect mirror that had been shattered the day that Leviathan came. Shattered by a beast that cared nothing for the damage he left in his wake.

I saw them, the reminders of the life and family that I'd had, the room that I had grown up in, and I turned my back to them. I turned away from the room and the belongings of the girl that I had been, and I walked away from it all. I took nothing, touched nothing. It wasn't mine anymore. That wasn't me anymore. Nothing was ever going to be the same. This was a hurt that would not vanish with time, that would never fully heal. I didn't need a memento, didn't want a tiny piece of my life to remind me of what had been. I wanted my mom and dad back. And that was never going to happen.

Leaving my room, I walked onward to my parents' bedroom at the end of the hall. There, I stood in front of the closed door, lowering my forehead to rest against the wood.

There were memories of this door as well. Memories of my much younger self standing next to Trevor, both of us shouting at the top of our lungs to be heard over each other, yelling through the closed door toward our parents inside, each trying to make our own side of whatever story we were telling be heard first.

My hand found the knob and then I hesitated before slowly pushing the door open. I stood there in the doorway of my parents' room, staring at their empty bed. My eyes closed, and I remembered all the times that I had run from my room to theirs. Nightmares that sent me scurrying from my bed to the comfort of my mother and father, early Saturday morning requests for permission a friend to visit, or just a desire to be with them. I'd grown out of such things, of course. But in that moment, as I stood in their room, I wished I never had. I wished that my last memory of lying in bed and snuggling with my mom and dad was last week, not years ago.

All the memories I had kept rushing through my head. Everywhere I turned, everything I saw, brought up more flashes of what had come before, of the events that had shaped my life.

"I'm sorry." I said, my voice loud in the empty, silent room. "I... I don't know what to do."

My hand found the light switch, and I walked further into the room to sit down on the edge of their bed. "I'm scared. I'm... I'm staying with... with Battery and... and Assault, but I don't know... I don't know what's going to happen." Turning around, I laid down on the bed in what had been my mother's spot, hugging her pillow to me. "I don't know where Trevor is. I don't know why he's avoiding everyone. I... I can't... I can't fix this. I can't fix anything."

For a few minutes, I was silent. The words wouldn't come. I might have drifted off for a short moment or two, as tired as I was. I wasn't even sure how long that I'd been laying there before conscious thought returned. Finally, a minute or an hour later, I murmured into the pillow, "It's my birthday."

Rolling over, I stared at the ceiling, extending a hand to the side of the bed that had been my dad's and rubbing it. "I'm sixteen years old today. Today is my birthday. But you know what that means? The only thing it means?"

I let the silence stretch out for a long time before heaving myself off the bed. "It means that, from now on, every year for the rest of my life... my... my birthday, my **birthday** is the day after... after your funerals. My mom and dad were... were buried the... the day before my birthday. And that's just... that's just not going to go away. That's never going to go away."

I was standing, my voice choked by emotion as the words changed. "Why did you have to go away?" I pled for answers that would never come. My hands covered my ears to drown out the deafening, deafening silence. "Why? Why... why... why..."

Rocking back and forth on my feet for a few more minutes as every possibility of what I could have done different, how I could have saved them, played through my head.

"I'm sorry." My words were weak, so soft they were barely audible as I stepped over to the dresser and picked up one of my dad's abandoned shirts. It hadn't been washed, and when I brought the shirt to my face, I could smell him. My eyes turned damp, and I inhaled the scent again before whimpering. "I'm sorry I wasn't there. I'm sorry I didn't save you. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Please, please..."

Somehow, my feet carried me to the other door, and I found myself in my parents' bathroom, still holding my father's shirt. Unthinking, uncaring, I pulled the shirt on over my own clothes. It fell all the way to my knees, and I used both hands to tug the collar up partway over my face so that I could smell it some more. My father's scent calmed me, made me remember the good times.

For awhile, I just stood there in the bathroom, draped in my father's shirt as I stared into the mirror at my own haunted eyes with their dark circles from the long, sleepless nights. I was tired, so tired. Yet every time I laid down, I dreamt of my family, which only made things worse when I inevitably woke to the truth.

Again, my small and weak voice spoke out into the silence. "I could have saved you. If I had been faster, if I had... god... if I had slowed my own fall, I wouldn't have been hurt when I landed. Then I could've gone into the... into the shelter. I could have... done... something. I... I fucked up."

"I've been trying. I've been trying to change, trying to be... better. I thought I was doing everything I could. I thought that I was... I thought that I could make a difference, just... just save... save everyone. I just wanted to save people."

Slowly, I moved to stand in the shower, still fully clothed. My hands found the knob, and I pulled it out, exhaling as the hot water instantly began to spray down over me. It felt warm, and I tilted my already wet face up to the spray and simply stood under it. "I'm sorry... Mom... Dad... I'm sorry I couldn't save you. I'm sorry I wasn't there. I thought... I thought I was doing the right thing."

"It's not fair. It's just not fair. You should be here. This isn't real. It's not real. It can't be. I... you're gone and I'm never going to see you again. You're gone and I... and I miss you, and I'm always going to miss you and I can't... I can't..."

Frustrated by my inability to express myself, I lifted the shirt to smell it again.

Nothing. I turned from the shower spray and inhaled. Still nothing. My eyes blinked a couple times, my reaction dulled from days of grief. Then I realized, too late: the shower. The water was washing away the scent that had calmed me.

"No." I scrambled, throwing myself out of the shower. My wet foot came down on the tile and I slipped, crashing to the floor painfully. But I didn't care. That pain was brief, this one was eternal. Scrambling, I all but flung the shirt off my head, turning it inside out before bunching it all up against my face.

Nothing. The shirt had been soaked through by the shower that I had stupidly, unthinkingly turned on.

"No no no no! No! Please! Please, I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" By that time, the crying had come back in full. I was blinded by my own relentless tears, hugging the soaking wet shirt as I lay on the floor, desperately searching for that lost scent that was as out of reach as the man it had belonged to.

Another thing I had ruined. Another mistake that I couldn't take back.

She found me there, lying on the floor of the bathroom. I didn't bother looking up as Marissa sat down on the damp floor next to me. Her hand found my back, and I whispered, my voice choked and broken by my own tears. "I ruined it." I lifted the shirt for her to see, almost babbling. "My Dad. His shirt. His... he smelled... and I... I had it and it was nice and I felt good and... and... then I ruined it. I ruined it. The water. I can't... I can't make it come back. Make it come back, Mars. Please. Please make it come back."

Her arms went around me, pulling me against her in a tight hug. I lay limp against her, my strength gone. My face buried itself against her shoulder, and as the tears fell freely, I pleaded for what I truly, desperately wanted, but would never, ever have. It was the whispered wish of a single girl against the inevitable, indomitable tide of reality.

"Make them come back. Please... Mars... make them come back."

Three nights later, a man's hysterical scream filled the air as he plummeted from a hundred feet in the air, straight toward the ground. His eyes closed a moment before impact would have come, and he let out a choked sob.

At the last safe second, I slowed him down, then let him drop semi-gently against the pavement. Then I crouched next to him and patted his hair. "So, I know you're new to our city. But for future reference, when someone like me says 'stop', it isn't local slang for 'flip us off and run the other way'"

"Oh my god... oh my god... oh my god..." The man sure liked to repeat himself. "You—you could have killed me."

I scoffed. "I wasn't going to kill you. Besides, you were fucking **mugging** people after an Endbringer attack. You were mugging _relief workers_, you tool. What'd you think was gonna happen?" When he didn't answer, I patted his head again. "Next time you get an idea like that, just remember: human yo-yo. Or, I could send you up and down a couple more times just to make sure you get the point."

His eyes widened and the man shook his head frantically. "N-no no, I get it. I get it. No hurting, no stealing, f-fuck just don't throw me again."

"Good boy." I straightened, reaching down to tug the man's hands behind his back before attaching a set of zipcuffs to him. Then I helped him to his feet. "Upsy daisy."

"Everything all right over here?" Assault, my... current guardian, stood nearby, having wrangled the other two thugs of this trio that had been trying to steal the rescue supplies that were being brought to the hospital. Assholes.

"She tried to kill me!" My guy blurted, taking a few steps away from me and toward the older hero.

Assault shrugged. "Looks like you're alive to me. She obviously didn't try too hard." He reached out to grab the guy's arm and tugged him over to stand next to his buddies. Then he looked at me. "Collection van's on the way. You wanna do one last pass over the area and make sure there's no more skulkers?"

I nodded and turned, using a line to yank myself up to the top of the nearby overpass so that I could see the street below a little better. Then, one by one, I went to each building and checked the alleys between them.

Assault found me about ten minutes later, after the PRT van had pulled away with their prisoners. "All clear?"

I sat down on the edge of the roof, letting my feet dangle. "Clear." I confirmed, gazing down at a couple of rats that were fighting over some garbage. I hesitated a moment while the man continued to stand there, before sighing. "I wasn't actually going to hurt him."

"I know that," He replied, before taking a seat on the roof next to me. "Trust me, kid, if you wanted to hurt him, he'd be hurt. He didn't have powers, and you disarmed him right away."

"I just..." I hesitated. "I wanted to make an impression. There's too many people in the prison now, and too few people to watch them all. He'll get out, legally or illegally, and if... if he thought there was no consequences, he'd go right back to hurting people. Maybe this way, he'll at least... think about it. Or go somewhere else." I let my head fall, sighing. "How bad is that? I'd settle for assholes like that, who try to steal medical supplies after an Endbringer attack, to just... go away."

"It's not that bad," Assault answered after a moment. "Understandable. You're not a killer, and trust me, that's a good thing. But you still want to protect your people, your area, your city. The point of all this... cops and robbers thing is to encourage the guys toeing the line to stay on the right side of it, punish the ones crossing the line just enough, and put the worst of the worst in a deep dark hole they never come out of. There's layers of 'bad guys', kid, and those guys are scum, but not scum that deserves to die or anything. They're just... stupid. I doubt they even really considered the fact that they were stealing medical supplies that people were going to die without. They weren't thinking that far ahead, they weren't... connecting their actions to how it might affect others. They just saw things they wanted and took them." He frowned. "Trust me, I know the type. But I also know that making them think about direct consequences to themselves is one way of getting through to people like that. Maybe he'll go right back to stealing, or maybe he won't. Either way, the problem's dealt with for now."

"That one is, anyway." I muttered. "Still plenty of other problems to deal with. Especially with only about a third of the city having water and power."

His arm nudged me. "Hey, do you have any idea what kind of a coup that is? A third of the city having water and power after an Endbringer attack is amazing. And you're a big part of that."

My head shook. "I didn't do much."

"Are you kidding?" He turned a little to look at me. "Kid, we just had the lowest fatality rate of any Endbringer attack _ever_. There's two major reasons for that. First, people being yanked out of danger just in time. That was you. Second, we hardly ever lost sight of the big guy, right up until the end. Usually Leviathan is so fast that he gets out of sight and does a lot more damage until people can find him again. This time, we were on him almost the whole time. That was you too."

I blinked at the last part, frowning. "How was that me?"

"You were going everywhere that he was." Assault pointed out. "You were so focused on grabbing people that were about to get hurt by him that you were constantly right on top of his location. After awhile, most of us just locked onto the signal your armband was giving off and followed it whenever the big guy got out of sight. It meant that he never really got too out of sight. The power and water are still up in those areas because the defenders were able to keep track of where he was going, and shield those areas properly. Hell, some of those areas up by your family's place already have their internet back, since Leviathan didn't get too far up through that area without people blocking or corralling him. Some of those defenders were only still alive to do that because of you. Others were healed and put back into action faster because of your idea to have that Undersider with the timestop ability work with Panacea. We had more defenders, all of whom knew where Leviathan was going and what they needed to focus on protecting. That was all you. And it's why we totally lost his location after your armband got fried."

I flinched in spite of myself at the reminder. "Sorry. I... I still don't know what happened."

"That's not my point." Assault looked sidelong at me for a moment. "Look, I... I'm sorry about your parents. That..." He let out a long breath. "That sucks. Sorry, there's no... no better way of putting it. But you can't keep blaming yourself. You did_good_ work out there. Without you, a lot more people would've died."

My voice was small then. "I still want my mom and dad back."

"I know." Assault hesitated, looking somewhat... awkward for a moment. Then he spoke. "I wasn't always the sterling, exemplary beacon of truth and justice that you see before you today. I uhh, don't really want to talk about it, but I lost my dad young too. Then I decided I was gonna go out and save people from the thing that took him away."

I blinked then. "That... sounds heroic to me."

The corner of his mouth tilted up into a faint smirk. "The thing I lost my dad to was the Birdcage."

My eyes widened. "Oh."

"Yeah." He nodded. "Oh. Anyway, I lost my dad to the cage, so I decided I wasn't going to let anyone else get sent there. Anyone who could afford my prices anyway. I did have to make a living, you know. Anyway, that was my enemy. The Birdcage. Obviously, I couldn't break in there, but I could break people out before they reached the place."

Something occurred to me then. "Wait, does that mean that you're-"

He held a finger to his lips and winked. "Shh. The point is, I did a lot of bad things and ended up letting more criminals out. I thought it was fun at the time, just getting one over on the guys that took my father away. Then it became more about the money. I let the job change who I was, and not in a good way. By the time I got caught, I was already starting to realize that this wasn't someone I wanted to be. I was having fun, don't get me wrong, but it changed me. I didn't really figure out how much it changed me until later, until I had something better to work for. But hey, don't tell anybody about that. It's better if they think their negotiations changed me."

His hand found my back and rested there. "I'm really sorry about your parents. Death like that, it can define a person. It can change them. Just make sure that whoever it changes you into, is someone that you actually want to be."

We sat in silence for a few minutes, until he clapped my back once more and straightened. "Anyway, let's see how far you can slingshot me. Bet we can reach that billboard beyond the overpass."

I was standing just outside my house again. This time, I was at the front door and the lights were on. Glancing both ways up and down the street, I unlocked the door and stepped inside, carrying a sack with me. The smell of macaroni and cheese greeted me.

Marissa came around the corner from the kitchen. "Hey, ummm, you hungry?"

I shook my head. "Ate dinner with Assault. Burrito truck. I'll probably regret it later, but it was good." My eyes fell on the couch where I had sat with my dad the night the truth about Taylor and my powers had come out, and then I looked away, blinking rapidly. Fuck. Even being here hurt. I wouldn't—couldn't go upstairs. Just being on the ground floor was almost too painful.

"Listen," Mars hesitated, folding her arms over her stomach. "This sucks for you. I can go somewhere else..."

"Where?" I asked, shaking my head. "None of the motels that have power have any openings, most of them were commandeered to serve as extra hospitals for all the injured people to have a roof over their heads."

"I could..." Marissa swallowed. "I could go find Krouse and Noelle and the others... They wouldn't turn me away."

"No." I said firmly, locking the door behind me. "Mars, you're okay here. You're safe here. Just because it... it hurts doesn't mean I'm stupid. This house has power and water, and... you need that right now, more than I need to stay away from the memories. I..." Remembering the sack in my hand, I held it out to her. "I was just bringing you a couple things from the supplies truck. Hot dogs and spam, mostly."

Taking the sack, she managed a little smile. "Yum, now the mac 'n cheese can have hot dogs too. Are you sure you're not hungry?"

I shook my head, lowering my gaze to the floor as tears threatened to overwhelm me again. My mom and I used to have hot dogs with macaroni and cheese for lunch every Wednesday back when I was in elementary school, since those days were half days and I was off by twelve-thirty. It was a special thing between the two of us. We'd watch whatever Disney animated film I wanted that week and eat on the floor. The thought made my eyes water, and I rubbed at them. God damn it, was**everything** going to set me off from now on?

Turning so that Mars wouldn't see the stupid tears, I walked to the door into the den. "I'm umm..." I needed an excuse to sit alone for a few minutes so that I could collect myself. The last thing I wanted to do was make Marissa keep taking care of me. She had her own problems. "I heard they got the internet back up already on this side of town. I'm gonna see if it's working so I can check my e-mail. Haven't... umm... done that in a few days. Obviously."

I could tell that she wanted to say something else, but she didn't push me. Her hand brushed my arm as I passed, and she spoke softly. "I'll be right out here."

It felt stupid, and somehow wrong, to do something as mundane as checking e-mail at a time like this. But both of my new guardians and Aegis thought I needed a break. They had ordered me to take off the costume and take a break for the rest of the night, with threats of an additional twenty-four hour lock-down if they caught me out and about again. So, for the moment, I was effectively grounded.

The connection was slow, but it worked. I opened the browser and went to my e-mail, while listening to Marissa in the kitchen.

As usual, most of it was junk. There was a few messages from people who knew I was in Brockton Bay and wanted to know what was going on. Then I noticed a message near the bottom of the list.

It was from an e-mail address that was just a series of numbers, while the subject read, 'The Truth'. When I clicked on the e-mail, I found a video attachment along with a simple message: 'You need to see this. Don't show it to **anyone** you don't trust absolutely. PRT is compromised. - A Frienemy'

When I clicked on the attachment, I found a strange, awkward view, as though the video was taken from waist height with a cell phone that was only vaguely pointed toward the subject. Still, I recognized the figure. It was Coil, standing across a room as he talked to... Sophia?

"That's it." My former friend was saying. "I did what you wanted, now get this fucking bomb out of my head!"

"Oh, I think not." The masked man replied. "We have far too much left to do."

Sophia snapped. "Bullshit! **Bullshit!** I did what you wanted. I made sure they died! I made sure they died—and-and now we're done! Fair trade, my life for theirs. That's means we're done!"

Coil raised his hand to settle it onto Sophia's shoulder. "No, I'm afraid that killing Tether's parents means we're just getting started."

"Oh my god, Madison." Dennis stared at me, face hidden behind his mask. "Do you... the video... it's real?"

I flinched, nodding. "It's real, Dennis. My... my parents..." My eyes closed and I shuddered from the effort of pushing the emotions down. "My parents are dead because of _**Coil.**_" I turned my gaze to him. "Sophia killed them, Dennis. Sophia **killed my parents** because Coil told her to." I put my head in my hands, sinking to the floor as my shoulders shook. "They're dead because... because of... because he wanted to... to get to me." The thought made me physically sick, and I put my forehead against my arms, shuddering with revulsion.

I'd called Dennis over to watch the video, warning both him and Marissa to change so that their identities would remain secret. I didn't want to risk moving the video anywhere else, especially to any computers provided by the PRT. It was already saved onto this computer, and onto the flash drive that I'd found in the drawer of my father's desk, just in case. In addition, I'd made up three different random e-mail addresses and uploaded the video to each of them, as well as two different file sharing services. Additionally, I had taken several screen-shots of the video that showed Sophia and Coil together, printed them out, and had the pictures taped up underneath the desk. Finally, when Dennis arrived, he had brought a prepaid phone with him, and we copied the video onto that as well.

In her costume, Marissa crossed over to sit next to me on the floor. "He's a monster, Mads. I knew, I just... I didn't think he'd go this far. I am so... so sorry." Her hand gently brushed my hair, her voice almost as pained as I felt.

Dennis sat on the other side of me, letting out a long breath. "Sophia... Coil... I just... Why? Why would Coil target you so specifically? What the hell does he have against you? I know why Sophia hates you so much, but this was his idea. His orders."

"Pandora said that he's afraid of me for some reason." I said helplessly, shrugging. "She thinks I'm useful because he has some big problem with me and my power. I don't... I don't know... " My eyes closed. I felt numb. There was anger, so much anger that it scared me. A very... big part of me wanted to scream and rage against the injustice, against the fact that my parents, who had never hurt anyone, had been targeted just because of who I was. Yet another part of me was just... tired. The shock of the revelation had left me feeling almost broken.

"I thought they just... died." I whispered, so quietly that the other two both had to lean closer to hear me. "I thought it was just one of those things. Now it's... it was... them. It was Sophia and it was Coil and they..." I swallowed hard past the thick lump in my throat, even that act almost physically painful. "They killed my parents. They targeted my parents and killed them... because of me."

It was Dennis's turn to pull me into a hug, his head shaking. "Madison, no. No, it wasn't your fault. It's them. It's... it's Coil. He... you saw the video. It's not your fault."

"If I hadn't started doing this, he'd never have any reason to go after them." I argued weakly, my throat already sore from the crying that had just not let up over the last few days. My emotions were shot. I wasn't even sure what I was feeling right in that moment. The anger, the fear, the remorse, the guilt, everything I felt was jumbled and broken up until I couldn't recognize what was right anymore.

"Then even more people would be dead." Dennis said, hugging me tighter still before releasing me to lean back. "Madison, listen..." There was a pause, and when he spoke again, his voice was unmuffled. "I... you can't change what other people do. You can't take that guilt. This is Coil. Coil and Sophia."

Surprised, I glanced that way. His face was uncovered, and he was staring at me with obvious concern.

"I—wait-your mask..." I protested.

"Oh, right." Dennis looked past me. "Name's Dennis. There, secret identity compromised. Moving on."

My eyes widened at that. "But... but you don't..."

"Eh." He shrugged. "If she was going to betray you, I'm pretty sure she would've by now. If you trust her with your identity, I can do the same. Besides, she kicked ass in that Leviathan fight."

"Clockblocker—ahh... Dennis... is right." When I glanced that way, I saw that Marissa had removed her mask as well. She met Dennis's gaze. "Marissa."

"Good to meet you without all the fire and screaming." Dennis announced, before straightening a little. "You're hurt, Mads. That's more important than secret identities, or whatever this cops and robbers with capes game is turning into. Like I said, if you trust her with who you are, hell, if you trust her to live in your house, then I can trust her with my face and name. Maybe I don't know her, but I know you. And I trust you."

We sat there in silence for a few moments. My head bowed again. "Coil." I said softly. "It's all Coil."

Marissa's hand continued to brush through my hair, her voice speaking softly. "I'm so sorry, Madison. Your parents... if I'd known he'd go that far... I... I would have..."

"There's nothing you could have done." I said quietly, not wanting the other girl to take any of the guilt that I already felt.

Dennis nodded. "And there's nothing you could have done either, Maddy. You saved a lot of people that would have died without you. This... this is Coil. It's Coil's fault, and we're not letting him get away with it."

"Exactly." Marissa's hand found mine, and she interlaced our fingers. "We have to deal with Coil. Whatever it takes."

I flinched, glancing her way. "Trickster and the others, they still think that Coil can help Noelle."

"Noelle." Dennis echoed. "That's the... the cape that made Pandora?"

It was Mars who answered. "That's right. And... and I know. I've tried to talk to them, tried to convince Krouse, but he just won't... he won't listen. Jess and Luke might, eventually, especially if they hear about this, but Krouse is obsessed. He can't admit he's been wrong all this time. Because if Coil can't fix her..."

"We'll find another way." I promised, glancing toward Dennis. "I know, this isn't what you signed up for. Whatever Coil's doing, if he has spies inside the PRT somewhere..."

"You need help, Mads." Dennis replied. "So I'll be there. And so would any of the rest of the team. You know that."

"I know." I swallowed. "I know we can trust them. I believe that. I just... I'm not sure it's fair to put this all on them. But we do need help. We can't just do this ourselves."

"What about this 'frienemy'?" Marissa asked. "Any ideas on who that is?"

I shrugged. "I'm not... sure. Maybe, but, I don't want to say anything yet. No, there's someone else we can talk to first. Someone else that can help figure this out."

"These are very serious accusations, Madison." Mr. Calvert said gravely from his place behind his desk. His eyes to Dennis next to me. "Have you told her how serious this could be, whether or not it's true?"

I spoke up before Dennis could. "He told me. I know it's a big deal. It's **my parents**, Mr. Calvert. It was already a big deal."

"Of course, of course." He nodded. "I just mean, is it possible that you're reaching out for someone to blame other than Leviathan? Accusing anyone, even a notorious villain, of not only breaking the Endbringer truce, but also of engineering the murder of a cape's parents, is one of the most serious accusations that you could possibly make, short of... I don't know, claiming relation to one of the Slaughterhouse Nine."

"My source is solid, Mr. Calvert." I told him firmly. "Dennis convinced me to bring it to you as the head of Parahuman Investigations. He said you wouldn't ignore it." My voice might have risen a little at the end there.

Mr. Calvert raised both hands placatingly. "Don't worry. I'm not trying to ignore anything, I assure you. I'm merely establishing exactly how far you want to take this, in this moment. You tell me what you'd like my next move to be. You said this should remain secret, do you have a list of people you'd like to be brought in on this immediately, or are we waiting for this source of yours to provide more information? Would it be possible to bring the source in and have Armsmaster speak with them in order to further verify the information they've provided?"

"I..." I hesitated, sighing a little as I lowered my head. "I'm not sure what to do, sir. If Coil really had my parents killed... that means he knows who I am. And... he's... got something personal against me for some reason." Glowering, I raised my gaze to the man. "I want to take him down, sir. I don't care how hard it is. I don't care how untouchable that son of a bitch thinks he is. If he... if he was responsible for my parents deaths... I'm going to ruin him."

Meeting my gaze for a moment, Mr. Calvert finally smiled faintly. "Then I promise to help you in any way that I can, Madison. Don't worry, we'll figure this out together. You have good friends." He nodded toward Dennis. "Remember, you're not alone. Anything else you find out, bring it forward and we'll find a way to use it. And whenever you're ready to bring the rest of the team into it, you tell me. If Coil did this... we'll make an example of him. Families are off limits for a reason."

I nodded at that, swallowing uneasily. "Thank you, sir. I... my parents... if he killed them..."

"We'll find out." Calvert promised, reaching out to put his hand on top of mine. His brow was knit with concern. "Like I said, you're not alone. I'm not going to ignore this. Anything else you get..."

"I'll let you know, sir." I said quietly, moving my hands to my lap as a little shudder when through me.

"We should go." Dennis announced, starting to rise. "We have other things to do."

Bobbing my head as I swallowed thickly, I pushed myself up. "He's right, we need to go. I... thank you, Mr. Calvert." I managed something resembling a smile as I looked to him. "Thanks for all your help."

"Of course, Madison." He rose as well to see us out. "I'm just glad you trust me enough to help with this."

"That's your job, isn't it?" I asked as we moved to the door. "Taking care of situations like this."

Calvert's hand found my shoulder as he guided us out of his office. "Absolutely. Resolving situations like this one is exactly why I took this job."

Just as we reached the door, there was a knock. The man stepped around us to open it, revealing a younger, nervous looking guy that was probably an intern. "Mr. Ummm... Mr. Calvert, sir? It's the police." He extended a cell phone.

"Thank you, Dexter." Mr. Calvert started to reach for the phone before pausing to ask, "What are they calling about?"

The poor intern looked like he really didn't want to be the one passing this news. "Something about a fire at your house, sir."

Mr. Calvert's eyes widened slightly, and he took the phone before glancing toward us. "I'm sorry, I need to handle this."

We nodded, and then left the office. Behind us, we could hear Calvert demanding to know how a fire could have started at his private residence, and that he'd be right there.

Dennis and I walked down the hall to the elevator, passing busy PRT agents and paper-pushers rushing back and forth. They_had_ been working on converting Kaiser's own office building to work as the headquarters for the new PCIPS agency, until Leviathan attacked. Now there were more important things to do, so the two agencies were still doubled up in the PRT building.

We said nothing as the elevator descended toward the ground level. When the doors opened, we walked out of the building. We crossed two streets and then took a sharp right into a semi-hidden alley.

"How'd it go?" Marissa asked, from where she was sitting on a couple of cement steps.

"Yeah." Another voice spoke up from further in, by the dumpster. Dennis stepped into view, arms folded casually as he observed the two of us that had just arrived. "How'd it go with the director?"

Slowly, I turned toward the figure next to me. "Well?"

'Dennis' glanced my way, and then 'his' figure shifted and changed until I was looking at Pandora. She, not Calvert, had been the person that I had told Dennis and Marissa that I wanted to find first, before we did anything else. Then we'd taken the time to think, really **think** about who had benefited the most from the past couple of months. Only one name had consistently come up in all of our talks. One name that had met me right around the time that Pandora said Coil had become paranoid about what my power was.

Sure enough, the strange clone confirmed in her even, calm voice. "Our assumption was correct. We recognized his power."

"Does that mean what I think it means?" The real Dennis asked.

"Yeah." I said in a low voice, barely restraining myself. It had taken everything I had, everything I could possibly cling to, in order to stop myself from lunging across the desk back there. "It means that Coil... is Thomas Calvert."

**8.04**

"So the guy that's not only in charge of us, but also in charge of the entire Parahuman investigation, safety, and internal review group... is Coil?" Dennis's voice was dull with shock. I think he was kind of hoping that our sting would have cleared the man. I know I kind of had been.

"That's about the size of it." I confirmed, putting my hands against the nearby wall as I tried to control my immediate desire to walk back in there, attach lines to Calvert's shirt, and propel him out the nearest window.

"What are we gonna do?" He asked, looking to me.

"We will remove him." Pandora announced, as casually as anyone else stating that they'd head to the store for eggs and milk. "Immediately."

Realizing what she meant, I turned that way. "No. Pandora, no, stop."

Her head tilted curiously. "You would have him live? We believed that the death of your parents would make you desire his death."

"I do." I answered honestly. "I... a part of me wants him dead, right now. You think I didn't fantasize about blowing that sonofabitch out the window, or throwing a desk into him, or anything else I could possibly do to _**make him hurt?**_ But this isn't about me. This isn't about what would make **me** feel better. It's about the people he's hurt. It's about my mom and dad and how they wouldn't want me to go that far. It's about Taylor's dad, and if Coil dies, his name'll never be cleared."

I stopped, taking a breath before I pushed off from the wall. "And it's about you, Pandora."

"Us?" She blinked once. "What about us?"

"If you kill him, if you rush in there and you murder Thomas Calvert, not to mention all the people you'd have to go around or through to get to him, then you'll never be seen as a real person." I told her flatly. "You'll always be the mass murdering monster that they think you are, and they'll move heaven and earth to put you down."

"We can defend ourselves." She said, assuredly.

"Then what?" I demanded. "You kill whoever they send after you? Then they send more. Then they evacuate the city when you kill those ones, if you can. They evacuate the city, they wall it off like they did with Nilbog, only this time with a ceiling. Maybe tinker-tech forcefields, I don't know, but they'll manage it. Then whoever's left in the city when they shut it down gets locked in here with you. Maybe you freak out at being contained, at being trapped, and you kill everyone else. But then there's just you. Just a bunch of you sitting alone, trapped in here, while the whole world out there goes on for the rest of their lives, forever, believing that you are evil, that you're a monster. And you will never, ever convince them otherwise. And even that's assuming you get past his bullshit timeline power."

For a long moment, the clone of Panacea, whose thought processes were so utterly strange and alien to me, who understood morality the way that I understood quantum physics (having the general idea that it existed and that it was important, but knowing little more than a few related words), stared at me. I had the distinct impression that I was being evaluated on a scale that I couldn't hope to understand, and probably didn't want to try to.

Finally, her head inclined slightly. "We will withhold our attack. For now."

I let out the breath that I didn't know I'd been holding. As much as I wanted to trust her, working with Pandora was a bit like holding the badly frayed leash of a wild, violent animal. Not only was I unsure how well I could use the leash to direct her before it snapped, but if she did turn on me, all the leash did was keep her within striking distance.

Actually, considering the damage potential she was likely capable of, it was like keeping a biological weapon of mass destruction on a leash.

Marissa spoke up into the brief silence that came after Pandora agreed not to kill Calvert immediately. "Well I'm kind of glad he turned out to be Coil. I would've been really upset if I burned down someone's house for no reason."

I smiled in spite of myself at that. "Yeah, he got the call as we were leaving. Don't worry, Mars, you did good." I glanced toward Pandora, "You said he can only have two timelines up at once, right?" The clone had described Coil's power as, essentially, being able to have two realities up at once where he could make different decisions. She said it was more complicated than that, but for all intents and purposes, that's what we should think of it as.

When Pandora nodded, I turned back to Marissa. "So assuming he was using his power, burning down his house made it less likely that he'd cancel our timeline and go with one where we didn't talk to him. Plus, this should distract him long enough for us to have our other meeting."

"Other meeting?" Dennis asked, frowning.

"Yeaaaah." I coughed. "The one I haven't mentioned yet. I contacted that frienemy at the same e-mail address and agreed to meet them after this was done." I shrugged helplessly. "We were using their information. No way to be sure that Coil wouldn't figure out who it came from. So I had to warn them. Now they wanna meet up."

"And you still have no idea who it was?" Marissa pressed.

Shrugging, I said, "I've got an idea, but I'm not positive, no. Guess we're gonna find out. Then maybe we'll have a better idea of how to handle Calvert." I glanced to Pandora again. "We're gonna have to be subtle for awhile. Can we... contact you? I mean, do you have a phone or..." I went on awkwardly.

In response, because my life wasn't enough of a damn horror show anyway, Pandora lifted both hands. She gripped the index finger of one hand and _pulled it off_, because of fucking course she did.

I let out a yelp while stumbling backwards, my eyes wide. "Pandora! What the hell are you doing?!"

Blinking as she _held the severed finger out to me_, Pandora replied casually, "We are providing you a means of contacting us."

As if my mouth couldn't have gaped open any further as it was. I squeaked, "You're _what_**?**" I lifted a hand to point while stammering. "That's a... that's... **that's a finger, not a cell phone!**" My arms waved in some weird pantomime as my voice went up slightly hysterically. "A cell phone is a little electronic thingy that goes beep beep beep when you hit the little buttons and then rings rings and you answer the phone and you talk and it most certainly does not rip off of your body and_**why are you trying to hand me your finger?!**_"

Through it all, Pandora continued to stand there with a faintly curious look, as if I was the one that was ripping off parts of my body and handing them out. When she spoke, her voice remained as cool as ever. "We do not have a cell phone. We have this." Again, she held the finger out to me.

"Ummm... Pa... Pandora?" Dennis decided to contribute to this lunacy. "Maybe you could explain how we're supposed to use a... finger to contact you?"

The clone looked that way before giving a short nod of agreement. "Perhaps we should have explained to begin with. Then we could have avoided this confusion." Her attention turned back to me, and she went on with a disturbingly helpful tone. "We have provided this portion of this body with the ability to process and understand sound."

"You turned it into an ear?" Marissa said slowly.

"I seriously can't wait until we get to the **less** confusing part." I managed.

Pandora continued while resolutely holding the finger out to me. "Our bodies are capable of hearing everything that any of ours separate selves hears. You need merely hold the piece of ourselves close and speak, and we will hear you. It is not shaped correctly, so you will have to hold it close in order for the sound to be picked up."

Slowly, in a daze, I took the offered finger while speaking dully. "You turned your finger... into an ear... so that I could talk into it... and all of your separate bodies... would hear me..." I turned toward Marissa and Dennis then, holding the finger. "My life... is **officially** fucked up."

"That was pretty big of you." Dennis said, an hour later. "Telling Pandora not to kill Calvert. I'm not... sure I could have made that decision."

"He's right." Marissa agreed. "I don't exactly have the best track record for good decisions when it comes to what I'll do for the people I care about. You could have just let her go."

The three of us had changed into our costumes for this meeting, and we were sitting in what remained of a warehouse near the docks. The place had been gutted by Leviathan's attack, and a good portion of what was left was underwater. We were on what had been the upper catwalk, and the water was only a few feet below our dangling legs.

I shrugged. "It wasn't exactly completely selfless."

Nudging me with her arm, Marissa asked, "What's that supposed to mean? You could've just let Pandora kill him. Hell, considering her duplication ability, she might have gotten him even with his bullshit power."

"Yeah." I agreed. "She might've killed him. But... I don't want that. I don't want him dead. He dies, especially if she kills him before the truth comes out, and he goes down a martyr. People keep thinking he was this nice guy. Not only does that ruin any chance Pandora has at not being seen as this evil monster, but... but I want people to **know** who the real monster is. I want to look at him and have him realize that every plan he made, every risk he took, every person he _killed_, was all pointless. I want him to realize that he lost, that he's **done**, and then have to live with that. I don't want him dead. Death is easy. Death is an escape. It's the people that are left that have to cope. And that's what I want. He killed my parents, the best thing I can do, the _worst_ thing for him, is to kill his plans and then make him live. I want him to survive. I want him to go to prison where he belongs, where he can sit for the rest of his life, knowing that all of his plans are dead... and that I'm the one that killed them."

"Mind if we make that 'we killed them'?" A new voice asked. We turned that way, to see a figure dropping in from the broken skylight to land in a crouch on the catwalk, steadying herself before straightening.

"Tattletale." Dennis's expression was hidden behind his mask, but he seemed surprised. "You I wasn't expecting."

"Right back at you." The Undersider shot back. "I figured she'd be here," She nodded toward Sundancer. "But I didn't expect Tether to involve her teammate."

"He's a friend." I said, straightening. "So it was you."

Marissa let out a quiet little sigh. I knew she had been hoping that the person who sent us the information had been one of her friends. Putting my hand against hers reassuringly, I went on addressing the villain. "I kind of figured, after that little help back before Leviathan arrived. Frienemy?"

Tattletale shrugged, giving us that fox-like calculating smile. "I hoped you'd figure it out." Her expression softened then, briefly. "Posturing aside, I am sorry about your parents. That's not what I got into this stuff for, and it wasn't my choice."

Swallowing, I folded my arms, telling myself to remain aloof. "But you still work for him."

"That's not exactly by choice either." She replied. "Sure, we're bad guys. We're thieves, con artists, whatever. I don't feel so bad about that."

"Obviously." Dennis interrupted.

The other girl's smile just widened. "Like I said, don't feel bad about that. Gotta do what you gotta do." She paused then, as though considering something before she addressed Dennis again, indicating me. "You know she's pretty much Panacea's friend. You should just ask her to tell the healer about your father."

"What?" I blinked, turning that way. "What's she talking about?"

"Later." He said gruffly. "This is more pressing. Why'd you change sides?" He directed the last bit to our guest.

Tattletale scoffed. "Who changed sides? Like I said, I don't mind most of the minor league stuff. Even some of the medium league. But killing someone's parents... breaking the truce... that's too fucking far. And there's some other stuff..." She hesitated before sighing. "The trouble is, I'm still not sure exactly what his power is."

"We know what it is." I said, unable to help the smile that came when she stared, clearly taken aback. "Aww, did we actually find something out that the girl whose whole schtic is knowing things didn't get?"

"Now that's an expression I wish we could immortalize." Dennis quipped, framing his fingers together like a photograph. "Tattletale, completely speechless because someone knows something she doesn't."

She recovered quickly, to her credit. "Okay, okay. Hilarious. What are we dealing with?"

"First," I replied, "we need to know what you know. We need information if we're gonna take this fucking psycho down."

"Information _is _my specialty." The Undersider agreed. "And I can give you a lot of it. Trouble is, people aren't really going to listen to me. If you want proof, if you want someone that can really help you bury Coil, then you're gonna need a reliable witness."

I raised an eyebrow, though the expression was hidden. "Where are we supposed to get one of those, exactly?"

Tattletale's smile was back. "Why give you one, when I can give you two?"

"Two?" Marissa prompted.

"First," The other girl went on with a nod, "You have to find Browbeat. Yeah he wasn't exactly really a bad guy. It's a long story, but it basically came down to either we control him, or Coil kill him because of something he knew. Since Regent... since Regent died, Browbeat's been free, but he's hiding. So find him and you've got a witness."

"So Regent WAS Heartbreaker's son." Dennis mused. "That's one. What about the other?"

Tattletale winked. "Well that's Purity. Or, excuse me, Penance. She's been in on the whole thing. Coil talked her into playing this game so that she could actually put the whole villain thing behind her and come off like a hero."

I frowned at that. "Wait, so she's... why would she tell the truth now, just because we ask?"

"Just because we ask?" Tattletale echoed, shaking her head. "No, don't be so naïve. No, she normally wouldn't, mostly because Coil has... leverage over her. The living, breathing kind of leverage."

My head shook. "So how exactly are we supposed to convince her?"

"Oh now she'll tell the truth because..." Turning, she whistled sharply.

In response to the whistle, another figure appeared at the skylight and jumped down the few feet to land behind the other girl. I heard a wail, and stared as what turned out to be Grue straightened. He held a bundle in his arms, which was the source of the wailing. It was a baby. They had a baby.

Tattletale went on then. "Because we stole his leverage."

**8.05**

"So let me get this straight." I kept my voice as neutral as possible a few minutes later, once we had left the warehouse and moved into the parking lot behind it. "Purity—errr, Penance has a baby, a kid she apparently loves above and beyond everything in the world and would absolutely kill for. And your plan was to **abduct that baby**?! What's phase two of this brilliant plan, walk up to Behemoth and kick him in the eye?"

"Actually," Grue spoke up, his voice dry. "Phase two was telling her step-son to tell her where to meet us." Penance's daughter was still whimpering and squirming in his arms. I had the feeling she didn't really like his whole skull helmet motif.

Dennis started to gesture with his arms. "Insane. You people are completely, utterly, insa-"

He was interrupted when Grue put the fussing baby into his arms during one of his wild gestures. "It'll probably look better if you hold her."

"Ohhh no. I'm not gonna be the one holding Purity's kid when she shows up." Dennis protested, though the baby had already stopped fussing and started to poke at his featureless mask before giggling.

"Aww." Marissa smiled. "She likes you, Clockblocker."

Dennis shifted the kid a little and looked down at the giggling figure. "Good, maybe she can tell her mother not to kill me." He pitched his voice higher to talk at the baby. "Oooh yes, can you say that? Can you say, 'no, mommy, don't blow off Uncle Clocky's head and use it for a soccer ball'? Yesss you can, yeeeesss you can."

Shaking my head, I turned to focus on Tattletale and Grue again. "So at what point are you going to tell us why you had to kidnap Penance's kid?"

Tattletale started to speak, but I saw a red line stretch out toward both of the Undersiders. Immediately, I stretched my hands out toward them and attached lines from my gauntlets to their costumes before yanking them off their feet and toward me. No sooner had I done that, than a blast of white light tore through the pavement where the pair had been standing, ripping up concrete and sending dust and debris flying.

Penance floated down from the sky, in full costume and fully pissed. After landing on the pavement, she raised one hand, which glowed with the energy she was summoning, and spoke with a voice directed toward Clockblocker that was thick with barely restrained righteous fury. "Give. Me. My. Daughter."

I could actually hear Dennis's audible gulp. He twisted his head a little toward the spot where Grue and Tattletale were picking themselves up. "I hate you guys so, so much." Then he stepped toward the openly enraged woman whose power could level buildings if she wanted it to. "No problem, ma'am. I was just holding her for you. Go ahead, take her."

While Penance took her baby with one hand, she kept that other hand raised with the energy ready to unleash.

"We weren't kidnapping her." That voice was Tattletale's, and the second she spoke, I saw a red line jump to her again. Flinching, I used a line to yank her closer to me just as a tiny bit of the power that Penance had gathered blew a hole into the cement where the other girl had been.

"No offense, Tattle." I said to her. "But I don't think the lady wants to hear your voice right now."

"She needs to." The Undersider girl replied. "Pur—Penance! Listen to me, we weren't kidnapping your daughter! We were saving her!"

Penance stopped gathering energy, but I could sense the hostility rolling off her. The baby was openly crying now, having picked up on her mother's distress.

"What?" It was a single word, dripping with disbelief and fury, but it was at least a word instead of more violence.

Taking a breath, Tattletale plunged onward. "Look, Coil's going down. These guys know who he is, who he _really_ is. He had Tether's parents killed, **during the Leviathan truce, **for god's sake. He's out of control. So he's going down. But when he sees that he's about to go down, he's going to use every advantage he's got. That includes using your daughter to make you defend him against the rest of the Protectorate. He would've forced you to choose between your daughter's life, and your new teammates. Then, after you chose your daughter because what else would you do, he'd own you forever. And he'd never, ever really let your kid go, because she's leverage, and Coil isn't the kind of person who lets leverage go. So the second, the very second that he thought he was in trouble, he was ready to have that kid buttoned up and secure in a nice hidden bunker."

Penance was still listening, the energy slowly dissipating as she began to focus a little more on the baby in her arms. "What... what's your point?" The hostility in her voice hadn't really lowered much, but I was taking the fact that there were no more injury lines to be a good thing.

"My point is," Tattletale went on. "We took your baby away from _him_, not away from you. Think about it, Penance, why would we take your baby and then immediately tell your step-son where to find us? We weren't blackmailing you, we weren't holding your baby hostage, we were telling you where to pick her up. She's **your baby**. We're not fucking monsters over here. We're not Coil. Take your baby, do whatever you want. But don't let **him** have her."

Penance finally lowered her arm, using it to pull her baby up fully against her before shaking her head. "I'm taking her away from here."

"Before you do." That was Grue, and I could practically sense the glare that Penance shot his way. He plunged on regardless. "We _are_ moving against Coil. Which means your part in his plan is going to come out. But we didn't want to throw you under the bus like that without giving you a choice, a chance to help us put him down."

"And ruin the life I've got right now?" She shot back.

I finally interjected. "And earn that life for real. Look, Penance, I don't know what your story is. I don't know what made you this way, but I think you actually like what you're doing now. I think you like being a good guy, being part of the Protectorate. But you got there with lies, and you got there with the help of a psychotic monster." I hesitated. "You've got your warning now. You could leave. Take your baby, take your step-son, and whoever else, and get out of town. The people you care about are safe."

"Or?" She prompted after a second of hesitation.

I nodded then. "Or... or you can help us put that fucking bastard where he belongs, and take your chances that the person you want to be is more important to the Protectorate than the person you used to be. Maybe they'll throw you in the Birdcage, maybe they'll give you a slap on the wrist. I don't know. What I do know... is that it has to be your choice. You decide which person you want to be."

Silence reigned for a few seconds after I finished talking. Penance kept staring at me as she held the baby to her chest, her expression hidden behind her mask, while those glowing emerald lenses seemed to gaze right through me. Finally, she spoke. "Coil really killed your parents?"

Even the words were still a sharp dagger to my chest. I swallowed, lowering my gaze before giving her a nod. My voice was soft. "Yes. He did. He had Shadow Stalker do it. We have the video of them talking about it."

Penance's gaze moved away from me and down to the baby in her arms. What she was thinking about, I couldn't begin to guess. Finally, she nodded. "I'll do what you need."

Hours later, I shook my head while coming out of yet another abandoned building. "No sign of Browbeat. Are you sure he's hiding somewhere in this area?" I'd already searched through four buildings, finding nothing but more homeless people that I couldn't take the time to truly help.

Tattletale, my partner for this particular excursion while the others were busy doing their parts, replied over the com, using the private channel she'd chosen. "Coil had it narrowed down this far. He's here somewhere."

Glancing up and down the rows of heavily damaged apartment buildings, I sighed. "I can't believe you people enslaved him. You ruined his reputation, maybe his life."

"It was that or let Coil kill him." The other girl replied shortly. "And it's why I'm staying out of sight while you look for him. He's more likely to trust you."

"I know why we needed to get Penance on our side." I said after another moment while walking to the next building. "And why we need to _help_ Browbeat, but you were saying we needed him. Why?"

"He can help get the heat off of Coil's fall guy." She answered after a moment. "Knowing Coil, he'll try to make people think the poor guy was still responsible for some of this, no matter what we say."

I paused, hesitating just outside of the building. "Daniel Hebert? How?"

"Because Browbeat was the one disguised as Coil, the one that killed Triumph and made him believe it was Hebert." Her response came after an obvious hesitation. "With Regent's control, of course. He said that Coil didn't give him much choice in the matter. And... now he's dead, so that leaves Browbeat to tell them the truth about it."

It was another two buildings before I finally found what I was looking for. It was a building that was so near to leveled that I nearly didn't bother checking it. But at the last second, I decided to duck past the rubble partially blocking the door and give it a cursory glance.

As soon as I looked inside the broken down building, I could tell that someone had been there. A sleeping bag lay in one corner of the dusty, debris-filled room, surrounded by open cans of food. There was no sign of whoever it belonged to.

Slowly, I stepped further in, glancing around. "Browbeat?" I decided to just call his name rather than stretch things out. If it was him, we could talk. If it wasn't, well, I'd find out shortly.

The warning from Tattletale came a second later. "Behind you."

I shot a line out to yank myself forward and out of the way, just as a hand brushed down my back, clearly from an attempt to grab my shoulder. I let the line yank me forward, then immediately had it send me backwards while using a second line to throw myself up and over the person's head. I came down hard in the dust, extending a hand and putting a line between my gauntlet and my attacker's back before using it to shove them forward and against the wall.

Then I stopped. "Browbeat?" Slowly, I released him from the wall. "It's you, isn't it?"

The boy that turned my way was clearly on edge, desperate to escape. He started to bolt, but I used another line to hold him. "Wait! Listen, we know you were framed! We know you're not a bad guy, just wait."

He froze then, eyes wide. "You... you do?"

"Yeah." I nodded. "And we need your help."

"Shit, get him and get out of there." Tattletale cursed. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

"What?" I turned. "What's wrong?"

"Grue just checked in." She replied. "Coil made his move. Fuck!"

I hesitated, glancing toward the confused Browbeat before reaching out to grab his arm. "Let's go." Then I addressed Tattletale again. "What happened, what did he do?"

"He had Trickster grab Penance's baby again." She shot back. "Exchanged her for a doll. He took his leverage back."

The reinforced metal doors of Coil's new base melted apart beneath Sundancer's burning orb. As soon as there was a large enough opening, she killed the miniature sun. Then she moved aside, while Grue took her place to send a cloud of darkness billowing through the opening and into the room beyond.

A moment later, he gave a thumbs up, and Pandora melted into a stream of rodents and bugs to pour through the hole and into the darkness.

Then we waited. Clockblocker, Tattletale, Grue, Sundancer, and I stood on the other side of the door. It was eerie, considering the fact that Grue's darkness meant that the sounds from inside were distorted and even muted to a degree.

"Hope this works." Clockblocker said next to me.

"He didn't leave us much other choice." I replied. "At least the Undersiders knew where his base was."

Before anyone else could respond, Grue dismissed his darkness and turned to us. "Clear enough, let's go."

As we passed through the opening, I saw the effects of Pandora's attack. Mercenaries lay broken and bleeding everywhere I looked. But thus far, it looked like she had kept to our negotiated deal. She hadn't actually killed anyone in this attack. I'd made it clear that I wouldn't, that I _**couldn't**_ be party to this if she killed the mercenaries. That didn't mean the mercs were going to be jumping up and dancing anytime soon, but they were at least _alive. _It was the best I could do.

"Ah, Tether. I thought you might have something to do with this." Coil sounded casual, even bored, as he stood at one end of the room, flanked by another half dozen of his uniformed mercenaries. Penance, meanwhile, was positioned a few feet ahead of Coil, her attention on Pandora, waiting for the clone to make a move.

"I suppose throwing your lot in with these... criminals and psychotic mistakes shouldn't surprise me." the psychopath mused, indicating Sundancer and both Undersiders, then Pandora respectively. "You don't have the strongest moral foundation, after all."

"Coil." I replied. "Shut the fuck up. Pandora, if he moves, eat him." I instructed the girl who stood facing down Penance.

Coil didn't look concerned. "If you believe any of this represents more than the slightest of hurdles, you have severely underestimated me, I'm afraid."

"Trust me, _Coil_." I growled. "The last thing I did through any of this was underestimate you."

"So you say." His reply was as casual and dismissive as ever. "I am intrigued though. What is the next part of this plan of yours?"

"Next?" I took in a breath and let it out before stepping that way. I stood with Clockblocker, Sundancer, Tattletale, and Grue at my back, and Pandora a few feet away. On the other side, Coil stood surrounded by his mercenaries and protected by the top-tier cape whose child he was holding hostage.

"Next, we're going to have a little chat about what you did to my parents. And you..." I promised. "... are not going to enjoy the conversation."

**Interlude 8 – Coil**

Within one timeline, Thomas Calvert gazed calmly at the costumed girl who thought that she was actually going to hurt him. His eyes passed over her allies and he dismissed most of them. The Panaca clone was a threat, of course, but not an insurmountable one. Finally, he broke the silence. "You wish to have a conversation? Shall I converse with Sundancer here, who has **abandoned** her friend, in spite of every promise she ever made?" He gazed at the traitor. "Noelle misses you, Marissa. She cries every single night, asking, 'Why? Why would she abandon me? She left. She left and she's not coming back. She gave up on me. Please. Please kill me. Kill me, she doesn't care. She doesn't care.'"

"_**Shut up!" **_The girl in question shouted at him, striding forward in spite of his bodyguards. "Shut up, shut up, shut up! You were never going to help us! You were never going to help her!"

"Oh but I was." Coil replied simply. "Actually, I already did. I sent them on their way. I help those that are _loyal_, not traitors."

"You're lying." Sundancer hissed.

"Am I?" He replied. "Search this place. You won't find them. They've left. The last job, the final bit of help, that Trickster provided was to assist me in getting Penance back under control. They've moved on, and no matter what happens here, Noelle will always know you as the traitor that abandoned her, while I fulfilled my promise."

Smiling faintly behind his mask at the girl who stood frozen from that revelation, Calvert turned his attention toward Tattletale and Grue. "And speaking of traitors... I expected this from Tattletale, but et tu, Grue?"

The darkness generator inclined his head. "Yeah, sorry, I sort of check out right around the time you start breaking the truce to murder innocent civilians."

"No matter." Coil waved a hand dismissively. "I have no more need of you. I have... plenty of other options." _Options,_ he thought, _such as the remaining Wards and the Protectorate, to say nothing of the generous staff my new position affords me._"Of course, all of the Undersiders will have to die. No telling how far your betrayal has spread. Perhaps I'll send Squad Four. They were... quite annoyed by young Aisha's commentary. I'm sure they'd quite enjoy the task of eliminating her."

Grue started to come for him, striding quickly. "You don't **touch** my sister, you-"

"Uh uh." Coil said quickly, holding a hand up and gesturing so that Penance would put herself in the boy's path. "None of that. We're still having a conversation. That _conversation _that Tether wanted so much." He turned his attention to the girl in question. "That's right, it was your request, wasn't it? So, what shall we converse about? Perhaps the fact that you are an unstable young woman who hides her insecurities and emotional failings behind stupid jokes, whose power has manifested as a blatant _obsession_ with preventing anyone from dying?"

"I can think of worse obsessions." The child shot back at him. "Like being obsessed with becoming the world's biggest douche. You've got the checkered flag on that race already, dude, you can let off the gas a bit."

"You see?" Coil spread his arms. "You believe that I ordered the death of your parents. You believe that I am responsible for that. "Yet you still make jokes. Is that really... healthy behavior?"

The girl took a step forward, her tone lowering. "I don't... _believe_... that you had my parents killed. I _**know**_ you did. Just like I know that you... are Thomas Calvert."

In his second timeline, Coil sat comfortably in a recliner within his secure fallback bunker, the one that no one but he knew the location of. He'd had the contractors who built it eliminated shortly after it had been completed, and all records of the work destroyed.

A smile crossed the man's face as he noted what was happening in his first timeline before glancing toward the crib in the corner of the room where his leverage lay sleeping. In the timeline where he was talking to Tether and her little gathering of traitors, the child was being watched over in a different location, by a team of mercenaries. Penance knew what her orders were, and she knew the consequences for failing to obey.

His eyes fell on the monitor across the room. On it, he could see his other base, the one where his other self was right now. On the screen, Tether and her allies were spread across the room, searching an already abandoned bunker. He smirked at the sight, considering for a moment.

Then the girl in the first timeline said his name, his real name, and Calvert realized that he couldn't let her go. He couldn't let her or any of the others escape the bunker, knowing what they knew.

With a sigh of regret for the loss, Calvert reached out to pick up the remote from the desk next to him. Running his thumb over the buttons, he keyed in the password and sent the signal.

On the screen, all of the cameras went out at once as the explosives he'd had mounted throughout the bunker went off. Tether and her friends were dead, and wouldn't be saying anything to anyone.

Cauldron would complain, of course, but he would explain that it had been inevitable. She'd known his identity, and there was nothing that would keep her quiet about it. They would be angry, but they would understand his dilemma.

He had everything covered, as usual.

In his first timeline, Coil paused until his other self had set off the detonation in that timeline before letting out a brief chuckle. "Thomas Calvert? I thought everyone knew that I was Daniel Hebert?"

Tether's head shook. "Are you really gonna play this game? You're not Daniel Hebert. You're _Thomas Calvert._ You know it, I know it, they know it." She gestured back toward the other children. "Denying it just makes you look like an even bigger ineffectual tool than you already are."

He let his head fall back as he laughed. "Ineffectual? Of all the insults you could throw at me, you choose one that I have proven false time and time again?" Reaching up, he tugged his mask off. There was no point to the charade now, especially since he wouldn't be keeping this timeline anyway. Being trapped with few options had never been in the cards.

Still, he'd tease them for a few minutes. It wouldn't do them any good.

Dropping his mask to the side, he regarded the girl. "Aren't you going to do the same?"

Amusingly, the girl did. She lifted her hand to brush the hood off her head, then tugged her mask off. The glare that Madison Clements shot at him then was anything but humorous. "You had my parents killed." Her voice had lost its light, teasing edge. Now, he could hear nothing but pain, and anger. "You had them murdered."

Calvert felt the harshness come back to his own voice. "I realize that you are a child and have no actual grasp or understanding of things that don't directly affect you, but do _attempt_ to surpass your willful ignorance. Everything that I have done is for **the greater good.**"

"The greater good?" Madison shot back. "The greater good?! What... what greater good comes from killing my parents?! What greater good comes from ruining a man's life, a man who was already _**destroyed **_by the death of his daughter?! The greater good is an excuse that people like you make up so that you can do what you want to do, no matter who it hurts. Face it, Tommy, you're not a genius. You're not a brilliant tactician. You're a bully. You're a thug. You're a two-bit soldier who got_lucky_ with a power that lets you **cheat.**"

"_**I SAVED THIS CITY!" **_He bellowed back at the ignorant, spoiled little brat. "Boo. Hoo. Your parents died. Have some god damn perspective. Do you have any idea what I can do now, from this position? I wiped out the Empire Eighty-Eight. _**I **_wiped out the ABB. I knew everything that was going to happen. I planned it all. I made the dominoes fall into place for the rest of you. And now, I am going to use this power to turn Brockton Bay into a parahuman utopia. My plans, my **vision** will shape this city. I will guide it into what it can become. I had hoped that you would be of some use in that endeavor." He sighed then. "A pity."

The girl just stared at him, shaking her head as she let the mask fall to the floor. "You say that like you think you're getting out of this."

"Oh child..." He said, injecting his tone with false sympathy. "I already have. You see, I already won. You have no other moves to make, because this timeline, this... entire reality... will cease to exist at a simple thought from me. And you... all of you... are already dead in the other timeline." The man smiled, raising his hand to tap thoughtfully against his chin. "So, I suppose that would mean that your entire existence depends entirely on how long you happen to entertain me, before I get bored and erase this particular timeline, and your lives, forever."

Madison's eyes closed, and her shoulders drooped as if a heavy weight had settled on them. Her voice was small, as it should be. "Just tell me why?" She pleaded. "Tell me why my parents had to die. What did they do to you?"

"Them? Nothing at all." Coil replied dismissively. "They died to strengthen you. The death of an enemy, a girl you _hated_, created a power in you that turned the tide against Leviathan himself. Your power as it was allowed you to become almost single-handedly responsible for the lowest fatality rate for an Endbringer attack, _ever_. Imagine for a moment what you could have been capable of, given the motivation your parents deaths. Honestly, I expected your power to grow from it. Such a pity."

"You killed my parents... to make me _stronger?_" She demanded with clear disbelief and shock.

"That's right." He confirmed. "I'm afraid that the entire point of allowing their deaths was to make you even more useful, to motivate you. And now you've thrown even that away. So, if you think about it, you're the one who made their deaths meaningless. Perhaps you can think for a moment about that, and about the fact that I will make a point of locating Trevor, your last surviving family member, and I will destroy him as thoroughly as I have ever destroyed anyone, just because _you_annoyed me."

Coil continued to smile as the girl hung her head, gazing brokenly at the floor. He wanted to remember this, wanted to savor it, so that he would never forget what it felt like when this was over.

In the midst of that bit of enjoyment, the silence was broken by a sudden burst of loud music. The man jumped, startled. "What-"

Madison had straightened, using two fingers to pull something from within her costume as she replied dismissively. "It's Weird Al's 'Dare To Be Stupid', Tommy. Jeeze, don't you know the classics?" Her eyes rolled and she held up a small electronic device with a clock on it. The clock was flashing all zeroes. "But mostly," she continued while silencing the song. "It's a timer."

"A timer... for what?" He asked, ready to drop this timeline.

The girl smiled, all of the defeat that had been in her eyes and her posture gone. "So that I'd know exactly when to do..." She raised her hand with a single finger outstretched demonstratively, before letting her hand drop. "This."

Exactly on cue, that same song, fully into the chorus, burst into the air not in Coil's first timeline, but in his second one. The abruptness of it made the man jerk in surprise, before twisting toward the source of the noise: the crib.

"See, Tommy," Madison was saying in his first timeline. "You forgot two important things." She indicated the clone. "Pandora can duplicate herself... _and _shapeshift."

The baby—no, the _clone_, poured itself up and out of the crib, resuming her normal shape. Then she smiled at Calvert.

"Hello." She said, gazing at him for a moment while he stared in disbelief. "We have been informed that we need not... be gentle."

He turned to rush for the exit, but she was already on him, already... feasting.

Penance had turned toward him by then, removing her mask to reveal a thin, dark smile as she watched him silently.

"We knew you'd have a safe hole to put your other self into." Madison continued. "So we had to infiltrate it. We just let you do the infiltrating for us, by having those conversations about Penance over the com that you could tap into, so you'd know that you needed to get your leverage back. Then you did the rest of the work for us. You took Pandora's other self right where she needed to be. Speaking of which-" She glanced toward the Pandora that was with them.

"Mercenaries." The clone replied dismissively. "They are handled." Her head tilted. "That version of ourselves were told not to be gentle with their targets. They have... eliminated the mercenaries."

Madison flinched a little at that, but kept her focus on Calvert. "So, Tommy, seems to me that you've got two choices. You either drop this timeline and let yourself be eaten by Pandora... or you drop that timeline and keep the one where you just confessed everything."

Growling, Calvert took a step back to put the squad of mercenaries between them. "You think that's enough? You're a child! I'll drop that timeline and leave with this one. You'll still die down here, it'll simply take a few moments longer. Then I'll make up some story for the Protectorate to hear." He raised his hand, gesturing for the soldiers. "Kill them."

"Actually," the mercenary squad leader spoke, turning toward Calvert to tap something on the side of his head. The image of the mercenary faded out, revealing Armsmaster in full uniform. "I'd sure like to hear that story you were planning on telling us. Wouldn't you?"

The other mercenaries tapped their own helmets, removing the holograms that had covered them to reveal Battery and her husband. Assault raised his shoulders in an elaborate shrug. "Actually, I'd prefer he just shut his fucking mouth."

"Sounds good to me." Battery agreed.

Eyes wide, Calvert grabbed the pistol at his side. They would **not** arrest him. He'd kill himself before he let that happen. He'd die before he let them put him in the Bird Cage, he'd-

There was an explosion of pain in his hand, and the gun dropped to the floor before he could finish pointing it at himself. One of Tether's metal balls had lashed out, striking the back of his hand hard enough to break several bones there, drawing a cry from him.

A second later, something sharp struck him right in the neck. He felt his legs give out, and he was slumping toward the floor, vision blurring while Tether lowered her arm, having shot one of her knockout darts into him.

She came forward, stopping to kneel down next to Calvert as he fell to the floor. He stared up, vision already giving out. "See Tommy," she said to him quietly. "You don't get to escape. You don't get to run away. You don't get the last word. You don't get to go out on your own terms." She reached out and plucked the dart from his neck. "I couldn't just beat you physically. I had to beat you at your game. I had to be smarter than you. I had to let you use your power and _still _beat you. So now you can go to sleep. You can go to sleep and by the time you wake up, you're going to be in the deep dark hole that you deserve to be in. You can be in the Bird Cage. Then maybe you can split your timelines and experience utter and crushing defeat and despair for the rest of your life _twice as much._"

"And you can know, for the rest of your life, that we beat you. _**We**_ _**beat you." **_

Her words filled his head, flooding his mind and leaving no other thoughts, as his vision of the girl faded to black.


	9. Arc 9: Evolution

**_A/N: _**_Having a bit of trouble with the formatting in this installment and had to really futz with it. If you find any problems, **please** let me know. _

**9.01**

"This isn't fair." Vista complained, raising a hand before angrily skipping a stone across the pond. "We're a good team. They can't just take two of us away."

Carlos sighed. "I guess they kind of can, Missy. It's not our choice, and our parents already agreed."

It was early June, weeks after Coil had been brought down. All of us Wards, plus Glory Girl, were standing in the park at the west end of town, trying to come to terms with the news that had come in only that morning: Aegis and Gallant were being transferred to another city.

Chris, sitting on the grass near the water, rolled his eyes as he let himself fall backwards to look at the sky. "Missy's right. We should put in a complaint or something. Who can we sue over this?"

"It's my father." Dean said with a sigh. "His business took a bad hit when Leviathan came, so he wanted to set up a new location. They offered him a deal to move our family up north. My dad started talking to Carlos's dad and... they came up with this agreement."

Victoria rolled her eyes, kicking the ground to send up a spray of dirt that arced out into the water. "That's stupid as hell! You've got a good team right here, why do your parents wanna break that up?"

"Apparently the PRT thinks we've got this area handled." Carlos replied with a shake of his head. "Coil's gone, the Empire's dead, ABB's been wiped out... the biggest organized threat right now is the Merchants. Plus, in my case, I'm turning eighteen in a month or so and they want me already present in my new assigned city."

"It's still not fair." I put in, unable to help myself. "We're a good team, and this just... feels like they're punishing us for it."

"Tell me about it." Vista muttered darkly, glancing toward Dean.

I knew that Missy's crush on Dean hadn't let up at all, even though she knew he wouldn't see her that way. This situation was probably the one and only time she and Victoria had been in complete agreement. They were both pissed off.

"I'm with them." Chris put in. "They can't just break up the band like this. Shouldn't we get a say?"

"Welcome to being under eighteen." Dennis replied a little darkly.

"This blows." Victoria glowered, lifting a foot or so off the ground to hover there. "They could've told me that you were leaving before I agreed to join the team."

Dennis shook his head. "What choice did you have? I mean... is New Wave still..."

Flinching, Victoria shook her head and lowered herself back to the ground with a sigh. "No." She said quietly. "Since mom is..." She swallowed and I saw her gaze flick to me reflexively before she continued. "Since mom is gone... Aunt Sarah wants to take a break. She said she can't do this right now. Dad's the same way. He doesn't want anything to do with the hero thing. Eric says he wants to move, maybe go to college on the west coast and get a new start."

"What about Crystal and her father?" I asked.

She glanced to me. "Didn't Battery or Assault tell you? They both accepted invitations from Armsmaster to join the Protectorate team."

Dennis snorted. "I still can't believe they let Penance stay on the team after everything she did to get there."

"She did the right thing in the end." I pointed out. "And she's powerful. I think they'd rather keep her on their side than throw her away."

"So what does that leave our Protectorate team with?" Chris considered from his place on the grass. "Armsmaster, Penance, Assault, Battery, Laserdream, and Manpower?"

"What's Panacea doing?" I asked Victoria.

"She doesn't really consider herself a part of any particular team." The blonde replied. "She figures she'll help whoever she can. Plus she's been weird lately anyway. I think the whole clone thing is still getting to her."

I winced. Pandora had vanished almost entirely after the end of Coil. I hadn't seen or heard from her since, save for a phone message from Dinah Alcott asking me to tell her parents that she was okay and that her power was telling her that she should stay with Pandora for now. Needless to say, her family hadn't been very happy.

Dinah had also thought to mention that Emma was with them, which had taken me completely by surprise. I still wasn't sure what I should say to Emma's father, if anything. The poor guy was out of his mind with worry, but would telling him that Emma was with someone like Pandora make things better or worse?

I needed to say _something_ to him. It wasn't fair to just let him keep wondering. But I needed advice on how to go about it, and I wasn't sure who to ask.

The momentary silence was broken by the sound of another rock hitting the water as Missy angrily chucked it as far as she could without using her power. "What about us? Clockblocker's leaving before the summer's over."

Dennis flinched at the despairing sound in the younger girl's voice, glancing toward me before his head shook. "Well Victoria just joined, and apparently we're supposed to meet another new member later today."

"Lose two, gain two." Carlos said with a soft sigh. "It probably makes sense to them, on paper."

"It doesn't make sense!" Missy shot back, turning to him. I was startled to see tears in the other girl's eyes. "None of it makes sense! We're supposed to be a team, we're supposed to stay together! First Rory graduates and then... and then he dies, and now you guys are leaving and... and everything's changing and it's not _**fair!**_" With that, the girl turned and began to sprint away. She took two steps and angrily made a shoving motion with her hand to draw the space inward. A second later she was clear across the park.

Chris straightened, sighing as he looked after the departing girl. "Does anyone disagree with her?" No hands were raised. We all thought this sucked.

Wincing, Dean glanced toward his girlfriend. "I should go talk to her. Promise that I'm not just gonna disappear entirely."

Victoria bit her lip, but nodded. "Don't forget, you and I still have a date tonight. And don't think moving gets you out of being my boyfriend. Your family's loaded, you can afford travel expenses."

The handsome boy grinned at that, before leaning in to kiss her. Then he set out to find and talk to Missy.

I looked toward Carlos. "Any idea who the other new team member is, boss?"

He snorted before pointing out, "I'm not gonna be the boss after the next few days." Then his head shook. "But no, they haven't told me who it is. Your guess is as good as mine."

"What about your brother?" Dennis put in. When I turned to stare at him, he amended himself. "No, no. Not the new teammate. He's too old anyway. I meant, have you heard from him?"

I sighed and stooped to pick up a stone of my own before tossing it out to skip across the water. "No. I don't know what's going on. He hasn't contacted anyone since he dropped his college classes. According to Mr. Tourney, he also withdrew all his money from the bank and closed his account there."

"Why would he do all that?" Victoria asked. "Is he some paranoid delusional conspiracy nut?" At Dennis and Carlos's stares, she blinked. "What? I'm just asking."

"No." I shook my head again. "At least, not the last I knew. Then again, I didn't really know my brother _that_ well. He tended to avoid me ever since junior high when I started being, umm..."

"Bitchy?" Dennis offered with a smile.

"Gee, thanks." I rolled my eyes, not that he was wrong. "Yeah, a bitchy little self-obsessed cunt pretty much hits the mark. Also a tattletale. I used to _love _to get him and his friends in trouble. I guess by the time I... got over it, he never really... got to know the new me."

"He should still be here." Victoria said firmly. "He's your brother. Family shouldn't abandon family when... I mean..." Even she knew that the issues she was bringing up were painful. After all, she'd lost her own mother in the same battle.

"I know." I said softly, giving her a break. "I just don't know what else to do. Maybe I could ask Battery or Assault if they know of any way to... look for Dennis, but that involves using Protectorate resources for a personal... thing."

"Ask them." Carlos coached, his voice soft. "I'm still your leader for now, and I'm giving you an order to talk to them and find out if someone can find your brother."

"Yeah." Dennis put in. "And unless whoever this other new person is happens to be older than me, which they aren't because even the PRT isn't wasteful and stupid enough to give us a new member with _less _than a month and a half before they graduate, I'll be the new leader after Carlos transfers. I'm keeping that as a standing order. Do whatever it takes to find Trevor. He's your brother, Mads."

I smiled faintly and made a point of saluting smartly. "Sirs, yes sirs."

"Speaking of finding people." Chris put in then, poking me in the ankle with a finger as he lay on his back in the grass. "Any luck with Mr. Hebert or Sophia?"

That brought on an even more depressed sigh as I drooped. "Nope. Even with the public statement about his innocence and how Calvert framed him, Mr. Hebert still hasn't come out of... wherever he is." I hesitated. "Maybe Coil actually did have him locked up somewhere and he's just getting one last thing over on us."

"Armsmaster says that Calvert's telling the truth when he says he doesn't have him." Carlos pointed out.

"Not that that's the be-all end-all." Victoria pointed out. "The guy lied all the time before, even with Armsy's spiffy automatic polygraph thing."

"He's pretty certain he's gotten past all of Calvert's tinker tech blocking equipment." I stooped to grab another stone, tossing it up and down in my hand. "Still nothing. He did find out something about Sophia."

"What's that?" Dennis asked.

"Apparently Trickster stole the remote detonator that controls the bomb in her head." I replied. "That bit about sending Noelle on to whatever his sources were to fix her? That was bullshit. The Travelers just took off and abandoned him, and they took Sophia with them. So now they're the ones holding her leash."

"Maybe that's why she hasn't made a nuisance of herself." Chris offered. "The Travelers don't really have any particular reason to hate you directly."

I glanced that way while picking up a second stone. "Except for helping convince Sundancer to leave them."

"Good point." He replied with a sigh. "Still, what do you think they're keeping Sophia around for? Does... she have any ideas?"

"Nope." I sighed, turning the two stones over in either hand as I gazed out over the lake. "She's still... upset about everything. Coil really got to her with that talk about how... how Noelle reacted. Hell, she doesn't even know if they're still in town. They haven't shown themselves at all."

"Maybe they should." Dennis joked. "If they were still making a big enough nuisance of themselves, the PRT might not have decided to transfer you and Dean."

Snorting, Carlos shook his head. "I'm pretty sure that wouldn't change anything."

His phone beeped then, and Carlos glanced down at it before letting out a breath. "Time to get Dean and Missy and go meet your guys' new teammate."

We were all heading down on the Wards elevator together. Missy still wasn't saying much, and had positioned herself in the back corner, arms folded. She was probably taking this the hardest out of any of us. Not that I blamed her.

Carlos glanced toward Dennis "You gonna be all right taking over the team?"

"Dude," Dennis replied with a shrug. "I'll have it for what, a month and a half? Then it goes to..." He considered for a moment before his eyes fell on Victoria, and then his eyes widened. "Ohhhh shit. I take it all back, Mads, this team is doomed. _**Doomed.**_"

While Chris and I snickered, Victoria made a show of grabbing for Dennis as he danced backwards out of her reach, then paused to consider before shrugging. "Yeah, you're probably right. See what happens when leadership falls to the oldest?"

Carlos smiled. "I thought I couldn't be leader when Rory graduated. Trust me, you... grow into it." The doors opened while he continued. "They'll help you learn, and this team is a good one."

"Yes, it is." Armsmaster spoke up from the short hallway between the elevator and the Wards room entrance. He had a woman with him that took me a brief moment to recognize as Penance. I was used to seeing her either in her new costume, or with her power active so that her eyes and hair were glowing white. Seeing her this way, in casual civilian clothes and with her simple brown hair, was still weird.

"Ready to meet your new teammate?" Armsmaster asked, with a raised eyebrow.

I grinned, unable to help myself. "Aww, are you guys giving us Penance? Well okay, but we are so going to kick your asses at the Wards-Protectorate Softball game."

He stared at me. "I told you before, we don't have one of those."

"Not yet." I replied. "But I've been wearing guy in charge down on the subject."

"I **am** the guy in charge." The older man pointed out.

"And I'm persistent." I informed him.

Rolling his eyes and coughing, Armsmaster gestured. "Let's go inside. Your new teammate's just been looking around the place."

As we made our way in, I saw a teenaged girl with close-cropped white-blonde hair standing next to the monitor. I didn't recognize her.

For a moment, we all stood and stared at each other. Then the girl turned to look at Penance. "See? I told you this was a stupid fucking idea."

"Give it a chance." The woman told her. "It's better here than back with what's left of the Empire."

"Wait..." Dennis was the first of us to get it. "Empire... does that mean..."

"Meet your new teammate." Armsmaster gestured back and forth between us. "Rune."

**9.02**

Victoria was the first to recover. "Oh sure, this is a fantastic idea." She gestured back toward Dean and Carlos. "Throw these guys away to make room for Nazi Barbie."

"Hey, who you calling Barbie, princess?" Rune demanded.

The former New Waver's eyes rolled toward Armsmaster. "I think the fact that the part of that name she objected to was 'Barbie' speaks for itself."

For his part, Armsmaster sighed. "No one's throwing anyone away. Calm down. Carlos would have been gone in a month anyway. This is giving him an opportunity to get to know his new city before he joins the Protectorate there."

"What about Dean?" The demand came in stereo, from both Victoria and Missy. The girls spared a glance to each other before focusing on the subject of their ire.

"Dean's father accepted a contract to expand the new Protectorate headquarters in Bangor." Armsmaster was clearly trying to remain patient. "The city's population has grown three-fold in the last ten years alone. They've got threats coming down from Canada, and quite frankly they're worried about Leviathan. They don't really feel like waiting for Brockton Bay as their nearest full time Protectorate Team, and I don't particularly blame them. They've been getting their own team established, and now they need a little help from experienced groups. Everyone's doing their part. New York's sending Flechette, the girl you met in the Leviathan fight with the crossbow. Boston's got a Case 53 metal kid they're giving up. Chicago's sending some girl named Grace. Hell, even Texas is contributing with some kid called Chronicler." He looked pointedly at all of us. "And we are contributing by sending Gallant and Aegis, because the people up there deserve protection as much as the people here do. Even if that _inconveniences_ the rest of you."

Well when he put it like that...

"Fine, sure, they deserve help." Victoria pointed at Rune. "But putting that _**Nazi**_on our team is a bad idea!"

"'That Nazi' is standing right here, Buttercup." Rune shot back. "You got a problem with me, you talk to me."

"Okay then." Victoria floated off the floor and moved forward to hover right in front of Rune, arms folded across her chest as she glowered. "I've got a problem with _**Nazis**_ like you."

In response, the other girl simply raised her left hand with her index finger extended, using it to poke Victoria in the middle of her belt. Then she immediately started to wave with a bright, exaggerated smile.

"Wha-" Victoria started to ask, just before she was yanked backwards by her belt, which Rune was obviously controlling. She yelped in surprise while the belt propelled her all the way back out of the room, through the corridor behind us, and into the elevator we had just come down.

Rune must have released her, because Victoria came flying straight back in, furious. "That's **IT!**" She drew back her fist.

"That is enough!" Armsmaster bellowed the words, making both girls freeze. "Victoria, if you want to remain on this team and have any kind of career, settle down. Cassie, same goes. Kayden vouched for you. She said you could be a better person if we give you a chance. That doesn't involve antagonizing your new teammates."

"Cassie?" Chris piped up. "Who the hell is Cassie?"

"What," Rune shot at him. "You thought my name was Eva Braun?" She turned her scowl toward Armsmaster. "Like I told you_and_ 'Aunt' Kayden. This isn't gonna work. You heard what they called me."

His look was unsympathetic. "You fought on the side of a known Nazi team. Forgive me if I'm not terribly surprised that they don't like you very much. You want instant forgiveness, go watch a romantic comedy. This is the real world, and you helped people do real nasty things. It's gonna take more than words to change people's minds about you. If that's too tough, if the idea that people aren't going to immediately believe that you want to change makes you want to give up, then go ahead. Give the fuck up. Go to Juvie. Because believe me, that's where I'd send you if it was my choice alone. I've been through this song and dance before with a probationary Ward, and I'll be damned if I'm going through it again. So if you wanna give up, you go right ahead. I'll leave your resignation and transfer papers filled out and waiting on my desk for your signature any time you wanna prove everybody right."

For a moment, Rune—Cassie just stood there. Then she let out a sigh and slumped back a little, muttering, "Whatever."

Finally, I spoke up. "So, question. Penance changed her name when she switched sides. What about Ruuuuu uhhh Cassie?"

"Fuck, I dunno." Cassie replied with a shrug. "Not like I picked the first name. What do you call a telekinetic that has to touch things?"

I heard Victoria mutter under her breath. "I've got a few things I could call you."

Wincing, I shrugged. "Uhh, Nudge? Tactile? You're right, that's hard."

"Mental Mistress?" Chris offered before chuckling weakly.

"Why not just Reach?" Dennis put in. "I mean, you can control anything you can touch... and that in turn, uhh... technically extends your... reach."

The other girl seemed to consider that before shrugging again. "Whatever. It's better than Rune."

"Reach it is." Armsmaster cleared his throat. "We're working on a new costume-"

"No." Cassie's head shook. "I have a costume."

Kayden hesitated. "People know that costume, Cass. If they see you out in it now-"

"What's the _**point**_ of changing if I have to pretend to be this whole new person?" Cassie shot back at the older woman. "It's bullshit anyway. Everyone knows you're Purity. I'm not playing that game. I'll take the new name, but I'm keeping my costume. If people pay more attention to some fucking clothes than what I'm actually doing, fuck 'em."

Missy rolled her eyes and stalked past me to go to the showers. "Oh yeah, this is gonna be a _great_ new team."

A few hours later, after dark, a sword cleaved partway through the telephone pole that I'd been standing next to right after I threw myself backwards away from it. The guy in the silver costume tore his blade free, while pivoting in the same motion. His other hand came up, pointing the sword in his other hand toward me. The blade extended to about twice its normal length before stabbing in my direction.

He called himself Duelitist. Yeah, like duel and elitist together. He was some mixture of breaker that gave him enhanced speed, reflexes, and timing, and striker that let him control and completely reshape any metal that he was within a foot or so of. He tended to use it on his own weapons, shrinking, growing, bending, and contorting them into various forms as he fought.

He was also becoming a pain in the ass, since his control over his own weapons meant that I couldn't pull them out of his hands. His short-range ferrokinesis outweighed my lines, apparently. Plus his armor was covered with some kind of super lightweight metal as well, which he kept tight control of. So no throwing him around either.

I put lines beneath my own feet and shot straight up, while calling down to him. "Just so I'm clear on this, you're _**not**_ a Final Fantasy cosplayer?" Another line brought me to the roof of the armored car that he and his buddy had been robbing before they'd been interrupted. "Cuz dude," I indicated his costume, which mostly looked like a long trenchcoat made out of metal, chainmail armor, and a high metallic collar that came up to cover the bottom half of his face like a bandana on an old west bandit. He even had long hair. "You totally look like a cosplayer."

He leapt to me, flipping up to the top of the armored car before driving one of his swords down into the spot where I had been, but I'd already used another line to pull me back to the ground. The man growled in frustration. "Stand your ground and fight me!"

"Oh no, I just couldn't possibly." I objected, waving both hands dismissively toward the objects I'd made him hit instead of me. "I'd be jumping in line ahead of the fights you already started with that telephone pole, the mailbox, that truck, and that 'no parking' sign over there. Why don't you finish those up first? I think the mailbox was giving a good accounting of itself."

He pointed at me with one of his weapons, reshaping it to look like a hammer. "First I'm gonna break your legs. Then maybe I'll get creative."

I let my head tilt to the side. "What does the great big moron say when he gets hit by the flying hotdog cart?"

Duelistist frowned. "What does that even- guuuuuugggnaaah!"

Stepping out of the way as the armored man faceplanted onto the cement, while the mangled cart that I'd pulled from down the street went tumbling end over end, I nodded thoughtfully. "Apparently he says 'guuuuugggnah'. Good to know."

He got back to his feet faster than I'd been expecting and I had to throw myself backwards and out of the reach of his long blade. Then he turned and touched the edge of the armored truck, making a half-dozen metal spears extend toward me with sudden ferocity. I was forced to launch myself up once again to escape, and by the time I came back down, the guy had disappeared.

"My guy's gone." A voice behind me complained. I glanced over my shoulder to see Battery shaking her head. "Some kind of changer or breaker power. It was like his body was made of jello or something. I couldn't hit him. What about yours?"

"Got away." I replied with a sigh. "Duelitist again. Didn't know he had a partner."

"At least they didn't get what they came for." Battery pointed out, moving to check on the unconscious driver. His partner had been killed when he tried to shoot at the attackers.

"What _were_ they after, anyway?" I asked, eying the mangled truck. "Cash?"

Rising from where she had been checking the survivor, Battery shook her head. "Nah, some kind of tinker-tech computer stuff back there. Ambulance and clean-up crew are almost here." She hesitated, then looked to me. "I, uhhh... Ethan wanted to me to ask how... I mean, I thought I should check on how you're... feeling."

My mouth opened and then shut before I sighed. "I'm dealing. I'm taking it day-by-day. No offense, it's gonna take a lot longer before I feel... remotely normal. It's... what, the thirteenth? Mom... mom and dad died... almost a month ago. But every time I wake up, it's brand new. It's like it just happened, and I just... I can't..."

"I get it." She said quietly. "If you want to talk... not just about that, but about... anything..."

Shrugging, I let myself slump a little against the damaged mailbox. "Like how I let someone die again?" I couldn't help but let my gaze pass toward the guard who had been killed. Sure, he'd been dead before we ever arrived, but still...

Battery put herself in front of me, blocking my gaze. "It's not your fault. Sometimes we just... don't make it in time.

I glanced away, swallowing. "What about the fact that I let the bad guy get away?"

Her hand came out to my shoulder. "Hey, do you have any idea how many bad guys kept getting away from me when I first started?"

"Uhhh..." I couldn't resist. "I know how many of them you ended up marrying."

"Damn it, Ethan." She hissed before rolling her eyes. "Okay, okay, but I swear that's not the norm... for anyone."

"Oh thank god." I teased. "I was afraid that if Duelitist escaped one more time, there was gonna have to be some kind of prenuptial agreement." I ducked as she lazily swiped at me, then turned as the ambulance rolled up. "Time to go?"

She nodded. "Actually, I think it's time for ice cream."

"Ice cream?" I asked a raised eyebrow behind my mask. Yeah, the man who had died was still weighing on my mind, and I knew that Battery was purposefully trying to distract me from dwelling on what I couldn't change.

"Ice cream." She confirmed.

Twenty minutes later, the two of us sat atop a roof, legs dangling off the edge. We were each holding a pint of Ben & Jerry's, and I had lifted my mask up enough that I could eat.

Pulling the spoon back out of my mouth, I purred. "Mmmmm, I could get used to this kind of treatment. If this is what happens when we let the bad guy escape, I might have to do it more often."

Snorting, Battery nudged me with her elbow. "Don't you dare. And don't tell Ethan. He'll sulk because we didn't get any for him."

I smiled briefly, staring down at my ice cream, before my eyes started to water, and I had to close them again. I squeezed my eyes tightly shut while a little shudder ran through me.

A moment later, while I was still collecting myself, Battery—Sam's arm came around me. Her voice was soft. "I know. I'm sorry, Madison. I'm sorry we can't make it better. You're just... you're coping better than a lot would. Sometimes I forget how hard it's gotta be, because... you're dealing with it."

"I'm trying to," I replied in a barely audible voice. "But then I just start crying for no reason."

Sam shook her head. "Not no reason, Madison. You have every reason." She hesitated a little before asking, "Do you want to talk about them?"

I shook my head quickly. "No. Not now. I can't."

"Okay." She accepted that before glancing to me while taking a bite of her own ice cream. "But if you want to talk about anything else."

"My brother." I finally admitted with a sigh. "I can't find him. I don't know where he is. Trevor just... disappeared. He dropped out of school, grabbed his money and... poof."

"I'll see what we can pick up about him."

I shoved another bite of ice cream into my mouth before trying to shrug it off. "It's no big deal—I mean, it is a big deal, but if it's against the rules or whatever. Don't-"

"Shh." Sam shook her head firmly. "He's your brother, Madison. And we're your... friends. The Protectorate's got your back. Not just me and Ethan, all of us. We'll figure out where your brother is and what's going on, I promise."

After a moment of silence, I shifted against her a little bit. Her arm squeezed around me in a half-hug, and I let my head lean down against her shoulder. We sat there in contemplative silence watching the lights of the busy city beneath our feet.

"Our ice cream's melting." She pointed out quietly a few minutes later.

"I know." I replied, just as softly. "I like this though."

There was a long pause before Sam responded, her voice even quieter, and tinged with something I couldn't quite understand. "Yeah... me too."

**9.03**

"And that... is... game!" I crowed two nights later, pushing away from the computer in the Wards HQ while holding my hands up triumphantly. "Hah! I beat you. I totally beat you."

Dennis coughed. "You got lucky. My rogue was _right there._ Two more seconds, _two more seconds,_ and your psychic would've been dead, which would've screwed your whole team."

I stuck my tongue out at him. "I'm sorry, the only words I keep hearing are, 'why yes, Maddy, you whooped my ass in the game I just started teaching you a few weeks ago. However did you become so awesome?'"

He laughed, rolling his eyes at the same time. "One time. It was one time, Miss World Champion. Let's go again, just so I can kick your ass and remind you who the real winner is. We'll see who's awesome."

"Oh I'd love to." I teased before pushing myself up. "But it's time for my patrol. No more games for me tonight."

"Cheat!" He claimed, pointing at me dramatically. "This girl is a cheat! You can't just win once and then run away. You've gotta give me a chance to get my title back."

"Sorry!" I wasn't. "You know how it is. Schedule and responsibilities, all that jazz. Besides, I've gotta go meet Rune—I mean Reach. I'm her partner tonight." I had actually been taken off of trainee status after the Leviathan attack, which meant I was technically allowed to patrol all by my lonesome now. It also apparently meant that I could 'escort' those who couldn't go out on their own yet, like Cassie and Missy. I still thought not letting Vista go out by herself was weird, considering she had more experience than anyone else on the team. But they went by age, and she just wasn't _technically_ old enough to go solo.

Not that I minded the nights that I patrolled with Vista. She might have been annoyed about being treated like a kid, but she was still fun to hang out with, and we were still coming up with interesting combinations for our powers.

"Wow, you get the first official patrol with the Nazi girl?" Dennis shook his head. "What'd you do to piss Armsmaster off this time?"

I rolled my eyes. "You know, if you keep calling her Nazi girl, she's going to keep acting like that. I'm just gonna do this patrol and maybe see if... you know... we can find some common ground or something. She chose to join the Wards, there's gotta be _something_ there that we can reach."

"Good luck with that." Kid Win called from the table on the other side of the room where he was assembling... something. "I'll be on monitor duty tonight, so if she gives you too much shit, just ahhh, lemme know and I'll start piping some annoying Aleph music through her comm or something."

"Maybe you'll get lucky," Dennis put in. "And some big brawl will happen so you don't have to do much talking."

I shrugged at that. "Personally, I'd prefer it stay quiet. One nice, long, boring night. That's all I ask for."

"Uuuuuuggggggnnn this is boring as shit," Cassie complained as the two of us walked along yet another rooftop. "Is patrolling always this fucking boring?"

I gave the other girl a look. Her costume consisted of a red robe and hood with black outlines over black light body armor with red outlines, the reverse of the robe, and a black half-mask that covered the lower half of her face. "Hey, sorry the lack of people being horribly injured or beaten depresses you. Maybe we'll get lucky and someone'll rob a bank while we're out here. That outta spice up your evening."

"Eat me," She replied, seemingly automatically and without particular malice. "And I mean it, what the hell do you guys do when nothing's happening? We've been out here for two hours already without so much as a purse snatcher."

"Yeah, see things are a bit different when you're not the ones doing the attacking," I pointed out. "You're just used to always being on the offensive. The Wards are more... defensive."

At the edge of the roof, I put out a hand to make a line between my gauntlet and the next roof over, yanking myself that way. Reach, meanwhile, floated up and over the gap before landing next to me. I cast a glance to her. "Okay, I've been holding back, but now I've gotta ask. You can fly?"

Her head shook automatically, face hidden inside that dark red hood with the black half-mask that came up to her nose. "Just lift my shoes. It's uncomfortable and hard to balance that way. That's why I prefer something more substantial to float on. But I can do it for short distances like that." I saw her brow wrinkle in a frown. "Why, your buddies tell you to find out everything you could about me?"

"Sure, it could be that." I rolled my eyes. "Or it could be that I'm curious. I mean, we are supposed to be teammates, after all."

She gave me a doubtful look at that. "Yeah, and I'm sure you're super-eager to be bff teammates with the Nazi. Next we can braid each other's hair and have pillow fights."

"Hell no," I replied. "I would rock your ass at pillow fights. Seriously, you'd need like, two other people on your team to stand a chance. I pillow fight like Muhammad Ali used to box. Just be all, pow." I mimed swinging a pillow.

She tried to stop it, but I saw the way Cassie's mask twisted a little bit under the smile that she failed to fully bite back. "Crusader and Alabaster were right. You really are a dork." She paused then. "You're not a nigger though. They thought you were totally a nigger."

I deflated a bit. "See, that's your problem. You can't just go around _saying_ words like that."

The other girl blinked blankly at me. "Words like what, 'dork'?"

"No!" I sighed. "You know, the N word. You can't just say that."

"You mean ni-"

I let her get that far before quickly putting a hand up to press against her mouth through the half-mask. "Stop it! You can't go around saying stuff like that!" Hearing her muffled, 'why not' through my hand, I sighed. "It's hate-speech. I mean, it's just... wrong." Finally, I took my hand away. "Look, how old are you anyway?"

"I'll be fifteen in another month, why? What does that have to do with anything?"

"So you're old enough to know that shit's wrong. I shouldn't have to tell you. This is Sesame Street level common sense and courtesy."

For a moment, an expression passed through her eyes, and then the younger girl spun away from me. "Go to hell."

I shook my head, reaching out to take the girl by the shoulder and turn her back around. "No, listen to me."

As I turned her back around, Cassie's hands went up to grab my arms before she released me. I felt myself start to float up and back as her power took hold, but I quickly attached two different lines, one to the roof and one to the other girl, to keep myself where I was, right in front of her. "Reach- Cassie, **listen to me.**" I used the line to pull her to me, cutting out the distance between us before putting both hands on her shoulders. "Why are you here? Why did you join the Wards in the first place?"

"Uhhh, maybe because I don't feel like going back into Juvie?" Her response came just a hair too late to be fully satisfying.

I shook my head. "That's bullshit. You weren't _**that**_ bad before, not so bad they'd send you to the Bird Cage or anything. If you wanted to, you could break out of whatever juvenile detention they put you in, eventually. So why are you putting yourself through this?"

She recoiled a little at that. "Why the hell should I talk to you? We're not buddies. You hate me, remember? I'm just a racist fucking Nazi."

The question made me sigh. "Why? Because I've seen someone sort of near your position before. Threatened with Juvie if she didn't join the Wards. Everyone ignored her shit and eventually it... got really bad. So I'm not making that mistake with you. We're talking because it's better than letting you bottle it all up and take it out on someone else, someone that doesn't deserve it, someone that might... that you might hurt."

For a long moment, the girl just glowered at me, her expression hot. I could see Sophia's anger and lack of control in her eyes, and for a moment I was afraid that this whole thing was going to be as pointless as any attempt to reason with Sophia had been.

I also felt the fairly irrational urge to hit her, just because of how much she reminded me of my psychotic former friend.

However, unlike Sophia, Cassie finally closed her eyes and I saw the hint of vulnerability, of basic humanity, that the other girl had lacked. She spoke quietly. "You wanna know why I agreed to this? Two reasons. First, you guys took Aunt Kayden... she's not really my aunt, just... it's complicated. Anyway, you took her back even after everything she did. You took her back anyway, and she asked me to join. She asked me to give it a shot. After she was allowed to stay, I thought it might... work for me."

I nodded slowly, considering that. "And the other reason?"

She hesitated for a moment. Then she sighed. "Look, you want my fucking life story, fine. Basically, even though my real parents left this whole... Empire thing long behind, they still raised me to say things like... that N word you don't want me to say. You say not talking like that is Sesame Street, well it _**wasn't**_ for me. The way I grew up, what was _normal_ was saying nigger, gook, chink, spic, kike, whatever. Mom and Dad weren't into the violence, but they did hate everyone who wasn't like us. You know how some kids grow up in a religion that does things that everyone that's not part of that religion thinks are weird or fucked up or whatever, and the kid doesn't realize that it's weird until they're a lot older, if they ever realize it at all? It's like that. I didn't fucking wake up one day and decide, 'hey, I think I'll hate Jewish people from now on'. _**I thought hating Jewish people was normal!**_"

"Then I got into trouble and I ran away from home. Found my uncle, and he let me stay with him. It was fun, but... the stuff he was doing wasn't exactly legal. He let me tag along and we got busted. I ended up in juvie, started a fight with some spi—some Mexican kids, ended up with a broken arm. So they stuck me in isolation. I got my powers, broke out, and my uncle sent me up here to Brockton Bay to help out Kaiser. Why? Because I had powers and my family was trying to make Kaiser like them."

I was quiet for a moment after she stopped talking, before prompting gently, "So what was your second reason?"

She looked away before answering. "Because I realized that all my life, I've been following the same fucking path. I'm a god damn racist because my family is, I'm a criminal because my uncle was, I'm a supervillain because he basically sold me to Kaiser. I never made my own fucking choices. And now I'm trying to change that—I'm fucking _**trying**_ to, and it doesn't fucking matter because no matter what I do, I'm always gonna be the stupid shit-ass Nazi girl! You said it yourself, not saying words like that is Sesame Street. Well it's not for me! It's like... it's like being told not to use the word 'the' anymore. The words pop out because I've _always_ used them."

Pausing briefly, I finally nodded. "Okay."

She blinked at that. "Okay? Okay what?"

"Okay, you said the word that I wanted to hear," I told her. "Trying. You said that you're trying to change. So I'll help you do it. But let's get this straight, you say racist bullshit, and I'm gonna call you on it, straight out. I don't care if it's awkward or whatever for you. You wanna learn how to be better? Take your medicine and deal with it. You say stuff that deserves a smack, and I'll damn well smack you."

Again, I saw that flash of vulnerability before it vanished behind the mask of jadedness that she wore. "I don't need a fucking counselor."

"How about a friend?" I asked.

Her eyes showed skepticism. "_You_ want to be friends with the Nazi supervillain."

"No." I shook my head. "I don't wanna be friends with the Nazi supervillain. But the former Nazi supervillain, who decided that maybe she didn't want to be that way anymore and is trying to change even if she thinks nobody's going to believe her? Well, her I might want to be friends with. We'll see how it goes."

Our coms crackled then before Kid Win spoke up. "Hey, you guys might wanna haul your asses over to Southland General Hospital."

I blinked at that before activating my comm to reply. "Southland? What's going on over there?"

"Not sure." He replied. "But there's reports coming in about some kind of little mechanical spider robot things breaking into Bakuda's room." The now-quadriplegic bomb-maker had been under armed guard at the hospital for weeks, not that she could go anywhere or influence anything.

I frowned at that "Little mechanical spiders? That's tinker stuff. What kind of tinker would be breaking Bakuda out of the hospital?"

"Leet, maybe?" Chris offered. "I dunno, but Laserdream's already on her way. She said she'd meet you guys there."

I shrugged before glancing at my patrol partner. "You did say you wanted some excitement. Ready to go stomp some spider-bots?"

Reach hesitated, staring at me for a moment, before she nodded. "What the hell. Let's go save the fucking day."

**9.04**

By the time that Reach and I arrived at the back lot of the hospital, Crystal was already there. She glanced toward Cassie and frowned a little, but said nothing about it. Instead, she focused on me. "For the record, the idea of going back into this place again does not fill me with warm fuzzies."

"Again?" Reach glanced between us.

I shrugged. "Long story. Maybe I'll tell you about it sometime. Right now, let's just hope what we're dealing with isn't as creepy or dangerous as that was."

"Amen." Crystal took the lead, walking into the hospital ahead of us.

We entered into a back area, with stairs to the left, a janitor's closet and a few other unlabeled doors to the right, and a short hallway toward what looked like a large waiting room from where we were. I could hear the television on out there.

A second after we came in, a Hispanic nurse somewhere in her early thirties hissed at us from the closet, beckoning us to come closer. Crystal did so, heading that way before asking, "Are you all right, miss?"

"I'm just peachy," the nurse replied, a note of sarcasm in her voice. "But the real problem's upstairs. That's where they are. The... the spiders. They're on the third floor. There's... there's no one else up there. We've been trying to keep everyone out of their way, since the... the note came."

I blinked at that. "Note? What note?"

The nurse hesitated before carefully handing over a piece of paper. "One of the... the spiders came right up to the desk and dropped this off."

Crystal glanced at the note, frowned, and passed it to me. When I looked at it, I saw clearly childish handwriting in red crayon. It said, 'Hi, Mrs. Nurses Peoples. Aunt Bockuda and me are really busy, so you have to leave us alone, or the spiders might get mad and kill a bunch of people or something. So no interruptions! Thank you! Yours corjelly, Me.' There was a hand drawn smiley face at the end.

"They're everywhere," the nurse whispered. "The spiders. Sometimes they're on the ceiling and... and other times they're on the floor, or the walls but... they're always... watching."

"Aunt Bockuda?" Reach blurted after reading the note over my shoulder. "Is that even spelled right? And did she really have a niece?"

Focusing on the newest Ward for the first time, the nurse's eyes widened. "W-wait, you're... you're..."  
>"And that is why you should have a new costume," I pointed out to Cassie, who was clearly scowling. Then I focused on the poor nurse. "It's okay, she's... on a work-release program. We'll take care of the situation. Right?" I looked up to Laserdream.<p>

"Right," she agreed. "Get out of here, we'll see what's going on."

As we walked away, with the nurse whispering for us to be careful before she ran down the hall, I asked, "So what now? I'm pretty sure whoever's up there might be screwing with us with the whole childish writing. But the threat's probably real, and we don't know where all the spiders are."

Crystal hesitated, clearly considering. "I need to call in and see what the others think. Kind of the low girl on the totem pole as far as the Protectorate's concerned." She turned away from us to use her own comm, reporting the situation to Armsmaster.

Reach, meanwhile, was gazing at the nearby stairs. "Why don't we just go up there, see who the hell it is, and put them down? Errr, knock them out. Whatever."

"Like I said, we don't know where all the spiders are. If whoever's controlling them sees us coming and tells all the hidden spiders to attack people, this could turn really nasty, really quick."

She sighed at that. "This playing defensive thing sucks."

"Sometimes," I agreed quietly.

Crystal was turning back to us by that point. "Armsmaster and the others are on their way. We're supposed to watch the building and make sure Bakuda and whoever this is don't escape."

Reach shrugged at that. "What's Bakuda gonna do, drag herself down the hallway with her pinkie? She's fucking crippled."

I elbowed the other girl a little. "We're still working on the empathy thing. And the thinking further ahead thing." To Cassie, I pointed out, "She means that the person could drag her out, or have the spiders do it, or something. Maybe she's got a hover cart or something, if it's a tinker. Hell, they might strap her into a power armor suit. Point is, it's a tinker, so don't rule out anything."

"Right." Crystal looked between us before pointing. "You guys watch the back of the building. I'm going around to the front until the others get here. Stay in contact, just in case."

"You got it." I started to pull Reach after me, back to the door we had come in. As we were going, I saw it: a mechanical spider roughly the size of a medium sized dog, crouched at the top of the nearby stairs. It seemed to be staring at us.

Freezing, I watched the spider, but it wasn't moving. It wasn't doing anything at all, other than watching. Reluctant to take my eyes off it, I finally managed to glance toward Cassie. The other girl's eyes were on the spider-thing as well.

"What now?" She whispered out of the side of her mouth.

Just to be on the safe side, I raised my hands carefully, before pointing back to the door. "Hi there. We're going out the backdoor now. Not bothering you at all." Gradually, I shuffle-stepped sideways until we reached the exit. The whole time, the spider kept staring, turning slightly to keep us in view as we moved.

It wasn't until we were outside that I started to breathe again. "I have a really bad feeling about all this. Something's not right."

Reach, for her part, actually looked just as uneasy. "I still-"

"Shh." I interrupted, pointing at a station wagon in the lot. There was another spider-bot perched atop it, watching us. "This is... seriously creeping me out."

"Hi!" A cheerful young girl's voice chirped from right behind us. I yelped and spun around, finding yet another of the spiders (or possibly the one from the stairs) squatting there barely two feet away. How the hell had it gotten so close? The girl's voice was coming from the spider. "You're Tether, right?"

"Uhh... yes...?" I confirmed hesitantly, glancing toward my tense companion.

I expected possibly an attack, or a threat, or something of that nature. What I didn't expect was the giddy little squeal of excitement, nor the happy little dance that the mechanical monstrosity did, spinning itself around in a circle on most of its legs while using two of them to wave in the air. "Eeeeeee! I knew it, I knew it, I knew it! You're my hero! Can I have your autograph?"

My mouth fell open behind the mask. "Uhhhhhhh..."

"Pleeeeeease?" The mechanical spider pleaded, arching up on several of its back legs while its eyes seemed to widen to near Disney-character proportions. "If you give me your autograph, I won't kill anybody here. Cross my heart and hope to die. Except I said I wouldn't kill anybody. Oopsie."

I shook off the confusion. "It's okay, it's all right. I... uhh, I'll give you an autograph."

Beside me, Cassie muttered, "You have got to be fucking kidding me."

"Yaaaaaaaaaaay!" Again, the spider danced happily. This time, the thing went up onto its legs, tilting its body all the way back until its bottom was facing us, then began to bob up and down while dancing from side to side. It _almost_ looked like...

"Is that thing doing the Snoopy dance?" Reach asked in blatant disbelief.

Dropping back down, the spider faced us once more as a small panel slid open on the front. I tensed, but all that popped out was a black permanent marker, which fell onto the pavement. Then the spider tilted forward and presented its body, while the girl's voice called through it excitedly, "Sign the body, please! And can you make it out to Riley? And say 'to my best friend and almost sister'."

All but floored by the surreality of this situation, I nonetheless did as requested, carefully signing the robot's body, 'To Riley, my best friend and almost sister. Thanks for not killing anybody. As long as you don't kill anybody, we can keep being friends. Yours, Tether'.

Once I was finished, one of the spider's eyes actually popped out, connected by some kind of metal coil-cord thing, bending up and around to peer down at what I'd written. I heard a happy little giggle. "D'ya mean it? We can keep being friends?"

I nodded hesitantly. "As... as long as you don't kill anybody, Riley."

Cassie whispered something to me, and I quickly repeated her words. "Or let your spiders kill anyone."

There was a long pause after that, so long that I wasn't sure the girl was going to respond. The spider-bot continued to sit there motionless, eye now retracted back into its slot.

Finally, she spoke again. "You know how comes I came here?"

Biting my lip, I shook my head. "Not... really. Is Bakuda really your aunt?"

"Nuh uh." The spider moved itself from side to side, approximating a head shake. "Not really, but I needed a new friend, and she was new. I don't think she's a very good friend though. She didn't even say thank you for the super-cool arms I gave her!"

"The... the arms?" I echoed, confused.

The reply was dismissive. "Never mind, you'll see. She was rude though. I asked if she wanted to be my friend, and she left! She left me here." That was followed by a little sniff. "That was kinda mean, you know? I did this really nice thing, and Bockuda wouldn't even play with me. Not even for a little bit."

"Wait, you mean Bakuda's gone?" My eyes widened at that.

"I shoulda done like Uncle Jack always said." The girl's voice lamented through the spider. "But I was trying to be nice and helpful, not like Uncle Jack. He doesn't know where I am. You know why?"

I felt completely lost, but I nudged Cassie and murmured, "Use your comm to tell them Bakuda might be out of the building." Then I focused on the spider. "Why... why doesn't Uncle Jack know where you are?"

"Cuz he doesn't like you." The girl replied. "He said that you were a bad influence, that I shouldn't watch your video clips. But you're funny! You make me laugh. But Uncle Jack's always right. But you're my hero! So... so I was confused. And my head hurts when I think about it too much. But, I wanted to come and help people, like you! I helped Bockuda, only she was mean and she left. But if I'd put something in to control her, like Uncle Jack would have told me to, then she'd still be here and she'd play with me. Only, I don't think you'd do that."

"I wouldn't." I confirmed.

The spider let out a long, heavy sigh, slumping. "Confused. I'm really confused."

"Maybe..." I hesitated uncertainly. "Maybe you could come here, the real you, and we could talk it out together?"

For a second, the robot peered up at me. The girl's voice had turned suspicious. "Are you trying to trap me?"

I raised both hands quickly, defensively. "No no, nothing like that. I just thought you might want to talk. I mean, we're friends, right?"

For a moment, I wasn't sure how she was going to react. Then the spider settled a little. Riley's voice sounded regretful. "I wanna be. You're the best hero ever. You made me laugh. Really laugh. Not like fake laughing with Uncle Jack. I forgot what that was like, til I saw your videos."

"So we can be friends." I assured her.

"Not yet." The spider shook itself. "I'm still confused. My head is all fuzzy and dumb. Uncle Jack says something, but you say something else. I can't do both. I can't be both of them. I can only be me, and I dunno who me is. I've gotta think, and... and experiment. I always think better when I can experiment."

I swallowed a little at that, unsure of what her 'experiments' might be, but pretty sure I didn't want to know. "Don't forget your promise, Riley."

"No killing people, no letting my spiders kill people." She repeated.

"Good. Good." I let my head bob. "Thank you, Riley. You're a good girl."

The robot froze, and for a second I thought I'd said the wrong thing. Then it stretched up on its legs, extending them somehow until the spider was face to face with me. The girl's voice came through, and it sounded as lonely, sad, and uncertain as any voice I'd ever heard. "No, I'm not."

The spider shrank back down then, before turning to skitter away. The voice called back. "I'll keep my promise though! No killing, cuz you asked. As long as you're my friend, I won't kill anybody. At least not until I... figure out if I should listen to you, or to Uncle Jack."

Letting out a long breath as the spider-bot disappeared, I turned toward Reach. "That was... weird."

"Weird?" She echoed. "That was ten tons of fucked up in a three pound bag. Who the hell was that girl?"

I shook my head. "I'm not sure. But she's dangerous. And unstable."

"And apparently, your number one fan." Cassie pointed out.

I was spared from trying to respond to that by the arrival of Laserdream, as she landed next to us. "Armsmaster's upstairs with Battery. The floor's deserted. There's no sign of Bakuda or whoever freed her. Did you find out anything else?"

My mouth opened, then shut and I sighed. "Can we go get a cup of coffee or something? And bring the others. I sort have a feeling that everyone's gonna want to hear this, and I'd rather not keep saying the same things over and over."

Crystal's eyes met mine. "Is everything okay? Besides Bakuda escaping."

"Honestly?" I replied with a helpless shrug. "I have no idea."

**9.05**

"I think that's everything, sir." I finished dutifully reporting everything that had happened at the hospital while taking another sip from the coffee that had been provided as soon as we were seated in this conference room somewhere deep inside PRT headquarters. We had been brought here to meet with Armsmaster and Piggot. Crystal was at the other end of the table, having already given her own side of the events and what she'd seen (not much).

"Reach, do you have anything to add?" Armsmaster focused on my companion. Piggot, in the seat next to him, seemed to be doing her level best to set the former Nazi supervillain on fire through the sheer force of her glare.

Reach, apparently unaffected by Piggot's glowering, shrugged. "Nope. She pretty much covered it." In the face of Piggot's continued scowl, the fourteen year old girl picked up her glass of ice water (she had refused coffee, or anything with caffeine, on the grounds of it being both unhealthy and addicting), and took a slow, deliberate sip while meeting the woman's gaze. "Except for the part where I rejoined the Nazis and started eating babies."

"She's kidding!" I spoke up quickly, elbowing the other girl. "Just kidding."

"Is this funny to you, Miss Herren?" Piggot demanded. "Perhaps you could explain what part of a dangerous bomb-tinker escaping custody makes you think jokes are appropriate."

Cassie raised one shoulder in a shrug. "I dunno, maybe the part where it's totally your fault."

I choked on my coffee, eyes widening while Piggot's hand came down hard on the tabletop. "What?" She demanded in a disbelieving tone.

"I said, it's your fault," Reach replied dismissively. "What, were we not supposed to say that out loud? I mean, whose idea was it to put the dangerous bomb-tinker into a normal hospital to begin with? Cuz it wasn't my idea. It wasn't even crazy spider-girl's idea. That was all you."

Poor Piggot's eyes looked like they were about to pop right out of her head. She very nearly came over the table. "If I had any say over your violent, criminal little ass, you'd be locked up where you belong, you little psychopath. Open your mouth again, and you-"

"You don't," A new voice replied from the doorway. I glanced up to see a familiar blonde woman coming in, while continuing, "Have any authority, that is."

Crystal, at the end of the table, blinked. "Mom?"

"Sorry I was late." Sarah Pelham, the former leader of New Wave, and Crystal's mother, set a briefcase down on the desk and let out a long sigh. "So much going on. Hey, sweetie, you all right?"

"I... I'm fine," Crystal replied rather blankly. "What are you doing here?"

Armsmaster, looking rather relieved for the interruption, answered, "Mrs. Pelham here has finally agreed to take over Calvert's job."

Unable to help myself, I spoke up. "People are totally going to appreciate the way that you fill out that skin tight snake costume better than he did." That time, I was rewarded with making Cassie choke on _her_ drink.

Mrs. Pelham rolled her eyes and pulled out a chair. "His civilian job, thank you. Which includes, currently, administration over the Wards."

"You didn't tell me you were considering something like this." Crystal pointed out. "This is big, Mom. Are you sure..." She trailed off uncertainly.

The older woman gave a slight nod. "Without... without the team, and after losing Carol... and with your brother leaving, I need something to do. I need to feel like I'm contributing. Colin," she indicated Armsmaster, "brought up the idea, and I've been speaking with Director Costa-Brown and Senator Wallace for a week now, just to get everything in line."

"The official announcement isn't until tomorrow," Armsmaster put in. "But I thought this was important enough to bring her in early."

"Yes," Mrs. Pelham agreed. "As I said, I'm sorry I'm late, but Colin was sending the audio through the phone in the car. Does this girl sound like who I think she sounds like?"

"Of course she does," Piggot all but spat. "She's probably here because of one of Calvert's back-up plans. He gets sent away and _**they**_ show up."

"I think you're overestimating the power he had." Armsmaster told her. "No one controls them, especially not enough to count on as a 'back-up plan'."

"Who?" I put in. Honestly, I think some part of me already knew the answer, but the second the idea had occurred to that part of my mind, it had locked itself in a padded cell and hadn't stopped screaming long enough to pass that information along to the rest of my consciousness.

"Slaughterhouse Nine," Crystal answered for everyone, her voice quiet.

"What?!" I jerked a little in my seat, staring down the table at the girl. "That's not... I mean..." I hesitated. "She said... Jack... and she was... and she said... and I said... and I called her... and we..." Slowly, I sank down further and further in my seat, my face pale as my throat closed up until all I could manage was a weak, "Oh."

The Slaughterhouse Nine. If this Riley was the girl that they thought she was, and this Jack was the guy they thought _he_was... "I... ummm... I think I might need a... a new... pair of pants."

"It is _**imperative**_ that we find this girl." Armsmaster said firmly. "I cannot stress that enough. We find her and we verify her identity, one way or another." Even he looked grave. "And we do it before the rest of them show up, should worst come to worst."

"Which is something for the rest of us to talk about," Mrs. Pelham pointed out before focusing on Cassie and me. "You two can go. Good job today. Whatever comes next, you convinced a violent psychopath not to kill anyone."

Armsmaster was gazing at me thoughtfully. "Yes, she seems to be making a habit of that..."

For my part, all I could do was walk to the door while trying not to whimper. The idea that the girl I had been talking to, the girl I'd called my best friend and almost sister, was _Bonesaw_, almost made me want to hide in a corner and cry for awhile.

Alternatively, I could find a way to feel better.

With a shhhhlllerrp, I finished covering my piece of cherry pie with whipped cream. "This is so much better than worrying about a pack of the most evil, psychotic killers possibly making a beeline this way." I said, shuddering in spite of myself.

Behind me, Marissa lay a hand on my back as she peered over my shoulder. "Did you get some pie with that cream?"

Turning slightly to stick my tongue out at her, I replied airily. "I _like_ whipped cream. It's the best part."

Grinning, Mars lifted her own plate. "Ready for the movie?"

Nodding, I turned to grab the glass of chocolate milk that was waiting there, and walked back out into the living room.

Being in my family's house still hurt. It made the permanent, dull ache in my chest worse in some ways, like touching a sensitive wound. Everywhere I looked, I could remember scenes of my parents, parts of my past that I would never get back again.

And yet, being there with Marissa helped a bit. It helped me remember that the memories weren't _bad_ ones, and that even though the idea of not making new memories with my parents was always going to be painful, holding onto and remembering the ones that I had could be good as well.

Days went on, and the hard, impossible pain gradually lessened. It still made me cry more than I wanted to admit, but I kept going. I kept myself busy, and as each day passed, it gradually started to become easier to think about how much I loved, and appreciated my parents for everything they _had_ done, rather than focusing entirely on what they wouldn't be able to do now.

In some ways, the idea of getting over their deaths, in _any_ fashion, made me nearly as upset as I'd been before. It felt... wrong, especially since it had only been a few weeks. I guess humans could only physically grieve at that... level for so long.

I wasn't over my parents' deaths. I wouldn't _be_ over it for a very long time. But I was slowly, gradually getting better at focusing on why I loved them, rather than the simple, horribly painful fact that they weren't around anymore. And Marissa was a big part of that.

Taking a seat on the floor, I set the plate down in front of me and took a forkful of nothing but whipped cream. "Mmmmmmmhmmm." I murmured in pleasure.

For some reason, Marissa was blushing as she sat down next to me. "Uhh, good pie?"

"Dunno," I replied while grabbing the remote. "Haven't reached the pie yet." I started the movie and leaned back against the beanbag chair behind me. "Mindless explosions and car chases, do your stuff." I gestured imperialistically before digging into the pie once more.

We actually watched two movies, though I drifted off sometime through the second one. I could feel the sleep coming on, but I was in the fuzzy, tired mindset where I didn't particularly care.

When I came to, the credits were playing, and I felt comfortable. I'd fallen asleep leaning slightly against the beanbag, but now I was laying down on the floor, with a blanket from the couch covering me, and my head was... I shifted, turning my head up to find myself looking up at Marissa, who was gazing down at me, my head in her lap.

I blinked at that, still gradually becoming conscious. "Oh... hi." I said quietly, feeling a slight pink coloring come to my cheeks in spite of myself.

"Hi." She replied, her voice soft, and little bit thoughtful.

My mouth opened and then shut before I managed to indicate with my head. "Was it a ummm, a good movie?"

Marissa shrugged at that. "I'm not sure, I was... distracted. We can watch again later, if you want to."

"Distracted?" My head tilted a little in her lap as I asked, curiously. "By what?"

The older girl hesitated, looking uncertain for a moment. "Distracted by the fact that... I was happy. Right here, right now. I... ever since we came to this world, me and the others, my... everything has been focused on helping Noelle, and getting home. That's all I wanted. I did some really bad things, things I never wanted to do. I saw things I can't ever unsee. I just... I never thought being here, on this world, would be anything less than miserable. But... when we were watching the movie, I felt... good. I felt happy. Even with Noelle... maybe hating me, maybe never forgiving me, which should make me curl up into a ball and cry, I felt... good, right here."

I blinked several times before teasing a little, "Wow, that must've been an amazing film."

Her eyes rolled. "It wasn't the movie. It was the company." She bit her lip cutely, glancing away. "You..." Turning back, she went on. "You're the one that makes me happy. You're the one that makes being here, even without the others, not completely suck. Just being here with you, it's... it's really..." Ducking her head as her blush deepened, Marissa mumbled, "It's really nice."

For a long moment, I stared up at the older girl. My mouth opened and shut, but no words came. The thoughts I had, the... feelings that I hadn't been able to articulate, drifted through my mind.

Flinching from the long silence, Marissa started to shift her legs out from under me. "I'm sorry." She mumbled. "I'm really sorry, I didn't mean... I wasn't... I'll just-"

"You make me happy too." I blurted, sitting up and turning that way so that we were facing each other. "I'm sorry. I was just... I was trying to think of the right words, the right... the pretty words to make it sound... right. It was just... dumb in my head and I didn't... want it to sound dumb, because it's not, it's great and you make me feel safe and good and I don't have... I don't have the right words for what that is, but I know how I feel. I feel... _good_ when I'm with you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I don't have the right words, or that I'm saying it wrong or too bluntly or... or..." I gulped, staring at the girl next to me. "I don't know how to say... what I'm trying to say... but... you make me happy, Mars. And... and you make... my life... better... because you're here."

For a long moment, the two of us just sat there, staring at each other. I think we were both afraid to break whatever powerful connection had been drawn between us from the confession of our feelings. I gazed at Marissa, willing myself to say something else, to find the right words, but in that moment, the only thing I could think was, _her eyes are really pretty._

It was Marissa who moved first, her hand coming up to brush brown locks of hair back away from my face before she settled her palm against my cheek. Her voice was gentle. "Maddy?" She said softly, her tone questioning.

In spite of myself, her soft, gentle tone made me gulp. "Y-" My voice cracked a little. "Yes, Mars?"

Her hand gently brushed over my face, making little shivers of pleasure shoot through me from the contact. When she spoke, her voice was even softer. "May... may I kiss you?"

My eyes closed briefly, the words, the question, the _idea_ sending a thrill through me that was only heightened by the touch of her hand. I almost forgot to answer, so focused was I on how it felt, before finally opening my eyes to look back at her. My head nodded fractionally as I whispered, "Yes, Mars."

A second later, her lips found mine. We kissed, right there on the floor of the living room. And for a moment that seemed to stretch on through time, I forgot every problem I had, every worry that I held, every doubt and fear that plagued me.

We kissed, and I was happy.

**Interlude 9 – Dinah**

Brockton Bay burned, the city itself set aflame because of the missiles employed by the military in their desperate, terrified hope to destroy the Slaughterhouse Nine before they left the city with their new member: Pandora.

Another image, another dying city. This time the destruction would be limited to organic beings, the attack coming through a biological weapon, specifically designed to attack Pandora and prevent her escape.

More images throughout the mosaic of possible futures, more death.

_10.21426 percent chance the city survives the next month. _

_4.00621 percent chance the country survives the next year if the city falls and Pandora escapes with the Slaughterhouse Nine._

The numbers were the same, as were the numbers if they did what she already knew they had to do, no matter how scary the prospect was. If they did that, and pulled it off, the chance of survival rose greatly. Still not high by any means, but better.

Dinah Alcott stopped looking at the numbers in her head, opening her eyes so that she could gaze around the dingy motel room that they had taken over. It wasn't much, but it was one of the few places that her power had told her they wouldn't be found if they stayed, using Pandora's shapeshifting to pay. She slept on one bed, Emma slept on the other. Whichever version of Pandora needed sleep used the adjacent room.

In a corner there was a table that was loaded down with a computer and three linked monitors. One screen continually panned through various camera views inside of PRT headquarters, a second had data constantly scrolling across it as the hacking program Dinah had pointed Pandora toward inside of Coil's headquarters did its job, and the third screen showed several different text documents full of notes and numbers: Dinah's scratch paper to keep track of all the answers she was getting toward their various problems.

Rising from her bed, Dinah glanced toward the nearby window. It was late enough, and their room was far enough from the street, that the view beyond was pitch black. Yet Pandora stood there, gazing at the city beyond.

After a momentary hesitation, tempted to check the numbers for this conversation, but resisting the urge, Dinah moved that way to whisper, "Panda?" It was her name for Pandora, another way of showing the dangerous, and potentially cataclysmic clone that they were friends, and that she should listen to her.

Pandora turned away from the window, blinking once before focusing on her. "Yes, Dinah-Friend?"

"You wanna keep being friends, right?" The twelve-year old girl asked quietly.

Nodding, the clone made some attempt at a smile. It came off looking more like an alien who had heard of the concept of a smile but wasn't quite sure what parts of the mouth to move. "Yes, Dinah-friend. We would like to remain friends. Is that why you are not sleeping? Are you worried that we will not be your friend?"

Dinah remembered when Pandora used to say 'I'. She'd switched to the royal we ever since her first body had been killed, forcing her to switch to her backups. Dinah wasn't sure why, but she did know that the clone had also somehow rewritten her brain after what had happened to poor Mr. Pitter, which altered her personality and made herself somehow less _and_ more dangerous at the same time.

The fact was, the clone who had sat in the cell with her in Coil's lab had been evil. Pure evil, even though she had hidden it somewhat behind the appearance of playing nice. The girl who shared the room with her now, post-Pitter, had more _potential_for danger, but also had the _potential_ to be good, which the original had lacked.

"If we don't do the thing that I said we needed to do, _right now_, then pretty soon someone's going to make us not be friends anymore." She informed the girl.

"I will hunt them." Pandora assured her. "They will not take away our friendship."

Emma had rolled over in her bed by then, blinking blearily at them. "Mmmwhat's going on?"

_Odds that we do what needs to be done if Emma comes? _Dinah asked herself. _32.1 percent. _It was a full eighteen percent lower than if they didn't take her.

"Nothing." She replied. "Go back to sleep, I just have to talk to Panda for a little bit." She turned back to that version. "I'll meet you in the hallway, okay? It's okay. I have a plan. Sort of."

Panda paused, but finally nodded. "Be careful, Dinah-Friend. We will protect you, but our agreement with Tether-Friend demands that we do not kill innocents. If you are seen and recognized because of the search before your assumed death..."

"I know." Dinah nodded. "I'll be careful. And that's why we dyed my hair anyway." She flicked a hand through her now-red locks. "So I look more like Emma's sister."

That said, she turned to walk to the door, passing the girl she had just mentioned, who was still staring at her. Emma whispered, "Hey, is she ever gonna let us go?"

Dinah paused, restraining the urge to look for those numbers. "It's better if we're here." She informed the girl. "Even you. You're important, Emma. Really important. I don't know how yet, but... but the numbers say everything goes better if you stay here."

The other girl sighed a little. "My dad thinks I'm dead by now." She lamented with a sigh, flopping back onto the bed.

All Dinah could say was, "Try to sleep, or watch TV. I'll be back soon." As she was going through the door, the young girl couldn't help the thought that passed through her mind. _Why do I have to reassure you? You're four years older than me._

But she didn't put voice to the thoughts. The numbers said that keeping Emma as happy as possible, while not letting her leave, was the best way of avoiding... a lot of bad things. For whatever reason, the older girl was _necessary_ to prevent very bad things from happening.

She wondered, briefly, what Emma would say if she knew that Pandora had only kept Emma because _Dinah_ asked her to, that her true kidnapper was not the clone, who had been ready to let her leave some time ago, but the twelve-year old girl who was ostensibly her fellow captive.

There was a weird movie twist in there somewhere.

Arriving in the hallway, Dinah smiled faintly at the sight of another Pandora clone waiting for her. The first was obviously going to stay in the room with Emma. "Hi, Panda." She said with a wave, then pointed to the stairs. "Ready?" She had already told her what they needed to do when the time came.

"Yes, Dinah-Friend." the new Pandora clone answered, giving a short bob of her head that was a little too quick and sharp, another product of her lack of understanding what others would take as basic human concepts.

Without hesitation, Dinah offered her hand to the girl who was likely an S-Class threat all on her own, given the proper motivation. Motivation that she would get if they didn't do this right.

Panda took her hand, and the two of them walked together, down the dirty stairway that was stained with things that Dinah really didn't want to know anymore about than she already did. They continued on out the backdoor of the motel, exiting into a tiny area between the building and the fence that surrounded the (empty and trash filled) outdoor pool.

_Odds of getting where we need to go if we go left? 12.4982 percent. Odds of doing what we need to do if we go right? 83.0219 percent. _

"We need to go this way." She indicated with a hand.

Ever since Panacea had helped her, Dinah had found that it was easier to get certain numbers as long as they were _related_ to a larger, more important number. She could still only ask a few of the big questions at a time, like, 'what are the odds that we all die if we don't do this one certain thing'. But once she had the answer for that, asking questions _related_ to that one, main question became easier. In this case, because she had used up a 'main' question for finding out if they really needed to do this, asking smaller questions related to accomplishing that task became easier. It wasn't perfect by any means, because the longer she kept up the 'little questions', the longer it would take before she recovered once she finally did crash. Also, the more little questions she asked, the fewer big questions she could ask without a bad headache, until a certain time had passed to let her recover.

It was, thankfully, enough to let her navigate them through the city streets and toward their objective. Dinah paused at one point to look up at the road that would lead her home, if she chose to go that way. She didn't have to look at the numbers for that one. Whether or not Panda would let her go was irrelevant. If she **did** go, the numbers for the survival of... pretty much anyone in the city dropped down into digits that she preferred not to think about.

Instead, she led her strange companion down another street, to a small house with a for sale sign in the front.

"This is the house?" Panda asked her, voice tinged with curiosity.

Squeezing the clone's hand tightly, Dinah nodded slowly. She was shivering from fear and worry, mostly related to what would happen if anything went wrong.

Panda turned a little to look at her, head tilted. "You are afraid, Dinah-Friend. We should leave now." She started to tug back the other way, willing to walk away just because the girl she chose to call her friend was frightened.

"N-no." Dinah shook her head. "We have to go in. If we don't, we won't get to stay friends. This is the only way."

"Then I will protect you." Panda promised. "You know that I will not allow harm to come to you, Dinah-Friend."

And, as Dinah gazed up at the dangerous clone who could possibly turn into a genocidal threat given the proper motivation, she did know that. "Thank you, Panda." She managed a weak smile, tugging the other girl's hand to pull her up the walk and toward the dangerous house.

A mechanical spider leapt from the top of the roof, landing in front of them with its pincers raised. Pandora started to move, but Dinah held up her hands. "Riley! Wait! We're just here to talk to Riley! Just talk."

The spider remained completely still for a moment, before the front door opened. Then the robot skittered its way to the bushes, where it sat, watching them intently.

Letting out a breath, and still holding tight to Panda's hand, Dinah started to walk up the stairs to the open door. It felt like willingly walking into a shark's mouth (if the shark had been capable of inflicting mind-shattering torture and pain), but the numbers never lied. The numbers said that **this** was the best way to avoid much worse things from happening.

As they reached the front door, a voice called out, "You better not be magazine salesmen! I haven't finished with the last one." This was followed by a tortured shriek that made Dinah shrink back against Pandora, before the girl's voice snapped in clear exasperation. "Wouldya stop trying to die already? I promised I wouldna kill nobody! Stop whining, I'll put your lung back when I'm done with it, I promise."

There was a horrible, wet noise, followed by a heavy plop and then a sharp, pained cry before the girl spoke again. "Errr, spider, better dust that off and wash it in the kitchen sink before we put it back."

She appeared in entrance way then, coming through a door that apparently led into the kitchen. The girl **looked** like she was around the same age as Dinah, though she wore her blonde hair in cute ringlets, along with light blue ribbons. Her pretty dress was completely soaked through with blood, as were the yellow kitchen gloves that she wore.

"You're not magazine salesmen." The girl noted, dropping the large cleaver she'd been carrying. "Did you come to talk about religion? Cuz I never did find the soul in the last guy that wanted to talk about that, and it'd be kinda nice to try again."

A questioning series of beeps came from the other room, and the girl looked over her shoulder. "Just put it back where we found it." A moment later, a bloodcurdling scream erupted from inside the room. Dinah blanched and took a step back, tears of sympathy springing to her eyes. Riley, on the other hand, rolled her eyes. "You got it upside down, dummy!" An answering series of beeps came back, sounding apologetic.

"It's so hard to get good assistants these days." The bio-tinker lamented, shaking her head with a low sigh. "So, whatcha doing? Wait, I know you!" She said, pointing to Pandora. "You're the healer. I was gonna make you my new candidate if we ever came up this way. Only Uncle Jack wanted..." She trailed off, shaking her head. "Whatcha doing here?" Then the girl leaned over a little to gaze at Dinah. "And who're you?"

Taking in a long breath before letting it out, Dinah finally spoke, using her power as much as she dared. "We... wanna be your friends, Riley."

The blood-soaked tinker blinked at that. "You do?" Her eyes squinted suspiciously. "Why?"

Pausing as she consulted her power, Dinah then answered, "Because you like Tether, and she's our friend. So we can be friends with you too."

Brightening noticeably at that, Riley looked between them. "You know Tether? Really truly? No lie, stick a needle in your eye? Cuz I'll do it."

"She has been useful," Pandora spoke up. "We have made a truce to not kill innocents."

"So did we!" Riley beamed happily, gesturing back over her shoulder. "Even though _**some people**_ keep trying to ruin the promise! Jerk." Turning back to them, she asked. "So whatcha doin' here? Did she send you?" The girl asked, rather eagerly.

Dinah shook her head. "Not exactly. But... we have a... an offer for you. A deal like the one you made with Tether. See, this isn't really Panacea. She's Pandora, she's a clone."

Looking interested at that, Riley reached up to poke Panda with a finger. "Ooooohhhh, I never got to play with a real clone before."

"You can play with all the clones you want, Riley." Dinah informed her. "Pandora can make copies of herself out of other biological material. Copies that can change anything about themselves. She can shapeshift into anything, and she can turn her pain off, so... you could experiment as much as you want to, and she wouldn't complain. She'd even hold tools for you."

In demonstration, Panda shifted her skin color from white, to black, to green, then back to white before making herself six inches taller, then shrank back down.

The bio-tinker was staring with wide eyes. "She'd let me experiment? Anything I wanted?"

"As long as it didn't hurt other people," Dinah clarified. "But yeah, all the bodies you want to experiment with. You've only gotta do three things for it."

Narrowing her eyes, suspicious again, Riley asked, "What?"

"One, you've gotta fix up that guy in there and anyone else you've been... ummm... playing with, and let them go as soon as we make sure they know not to tell anybody." Dinah said slowly. "You don't need them if you have Pandora."

Considering that for a second, the bio-tinker finally nodded. "Okay, as long as I can experiment."

"Second," Dinah continued. "No more experimenting on _**anyone**_ who isn't Pandora. As long as you're with us, as long as we're friends, you only experiment on Pandora, and even then, only the ones that you're supposed to experiment on."

Once the other girl had agreed to that, Dinah finished. "And finally, as long as you're here... you can't ever do anything that would let Jack or any of the others figure out where you are. You have to stay secret. We won't stop you from leaving if you decide to, but as long as you're here, you never, ever let them know where you are. If you do all that, then we can be friends."

For a long few moments, Riley was still and silent. She watched Pandora like a kid waiting to pounce on their first Christmas present, but was clearly torn. Finally, she nodded. "Okay. Deal. Let's be friends."

As she looked back and forth between Riley and Panda, some part of Dinah, in that moment, couldn't help but wonder if there was some kind of record for collecting dangerous, potentially world-ending threats like they were Pokemon.

And she swore, right then and there, that she was never, ever going to ask her power if there was any way to talk an Endbringer onto their team. It wouldn't fit in the motel room.


	10. Arc 10: Trials

_**Notes: **_Starfox – Yeah, Mads does have sympathy toward the whole redemption thing. And yup, Trevor will come back into play eventually. :) Glad you like the creepiness and Dinah's little side story.

Kine X – Believe it or not, I didn't catch that. At least it wasn't all of the Nine? ;)

jaredpowers1 – Wow, thank you. You're amazingly kind, and I so appreciate the encouragement. Using a character who wasn't given much development was definitely purposeful on my part. It let me write her pretty much however I wanted. Anyway, I hope you continue to enjoy the story.

That last bit goes for everyone. I hope you like what you read.

**10.01**

The dew on the early morning grass was damp and cool against my bare toes. I wiggled them a little and stretched, standing in the backyard of my parents' home while gazing up at the lightly clouded sky. Somewhere over in the next yard, birds sang back and forth to one another, while the faint sound of cartoons from the house on the opposite side reached me through their open back door.

A pair of arms enveloped me from behind, and I felt a soft kiss against the top of my head, before a voice asked, "So... what are we, exactly?"

Hearing Marissa's question made me turn my head slightly to look at her. "Ummm... human?" I teased.

She rolled her eyes and dug her fingers into my sides, tickling me briefly just to make me yelp. "You know what I mean, imp."

"I'm... I'm not sure." I answered honestly. "I... I had a boyfriend a couple of times, but it was never really serious. Just one of those... 'eh, everyone else has one' sort of things. But I never... I never thought I was a ummm..."

"That you liked girls," Marissa supplied.

I nodded. "Yeah, that. I never really thought that until I met you. Maybe I'm just Marsexual." I offered with a giggle. "Cuz I really do like you. A lot. Kissing is really nice."

"I like you too, Mads." The other girl returned my smile, hugging me tighter against her from behind. "I guess it's kind of easier for me. I knew I was... in love with a girl for a long time."

That was one thing I didn't even have to hesitate on. "Noelle." I said confidently. "You were in love with Noelle."

Her head bobbed a little. "Was it that obvious?"

"To me it was."

A soft sigh escaped her, before she let me go. Then Marissa turned me around to face her. "I wanna tell you something, okay?" When I nodded, she went on. "Whatever this is, whatever we have, you are _not_ a consolation prize. I like you because you're you. I mean, you make me laugh. You make me think. I can talk to you for hours and feel like it was only a few minutes. I... I was in love with Noelle, but I don't think she ever returned those feelings. Not the way I wanted her to, anyway."

Biting my lip, I shifted on my feet a little before asking, "What if she did? Now, I mean. What if she came up to find you and said she wanted you back?"

Mars regarded me for a long moment, considering the question honestly before answering. "I would help her in any way that I could. I would do whatever I could do to make her feel better, to keep her safe, or to make her happy... that didn't involve leaving you." Her hand cupped my cheek. "You're the one thing that made me like living here, the one person that made being stuck in this world kind of... worth it. I would do anything for Noelle... as a friend. But I _choose_ you. I think I... chose you when I left the others, when I couldn't do what they wanted me to do anymore. Noelle was—is... I don't know, she was my best friend. And I still want to help her. I want to make her better. Because she's my friend."

I nodded slowly at that. "I want to help Noelle too. But I don't think Trickster will tell us where she is, or let us get anywhere near them. Even if we did know how to fix her. Because if Panacea couldn't do it..." I sighed low and slumped.

Marissa's hand on my face brushed lightly down my cheek. "One bit at a time. I've been talking to Jess over our private e-mails. She's getting there. But don't forget, it's Thursday. Which means..."

I groaned out loud. "Cemetery day." Because it was now summer (they had basically given up on getting us back in school before vacation started, so my career at Arcadia High would begin with the Fall semester), they had moved my cemetery community service to Thursdays so that I could work with the team on Saturdays.

"I'll pack you a lunch." Mars promised, her eyes bright with amusement.

"Thanks." I returned her smile, before blinking. "I don't think I ever answered your question, about what we are."

She nodded slowly, watching me. "I guess you're right."

Feeling suddenly self-conscious, I shifted my weight, fidgeting at the ground with my bare feet. "I umm... I guess I'd kind of like if... if you were my... ummm... if we could be... I mean... I know it's..." I trailed off before whispering, "Girlfriends?"

Her answer was to kiss me, very gently, before whispering, "I'd like that."

"What the fuck kind of unfair rule is 'no powers'?" Cassie complained, glaring at the trowel in her hand that she was supposed to use to dig up weeds. "Gimme a box of these things and ten minutes and I'll have every weed in this whole fucking cemetery knocked out with my power."

They had given Reach the same punishment I had gotten, only hers was two years community service instead of one. It meant that she had started working in the cemetery with me pretty much the exact same time that the boys had finished up their punishment.

"I think that's kind of the point," I offered with a shrug. "It's supposed to be a punishment, if you can do it easily, it's not really a punishment.

"Meh." The former villain shrugged. "What kind of anti-Nazi lesson is breaking our backs doing yardwork supposed to impart anyway? If Kaiser wanted to make sure someone didn't do something he didn't like, he was a lot more direct about it."

I raised an eyebrow. "Yeeeaaah, it's probably a good thing that we don't take management advice from the megalomaniac racist supervillain."

"Hey," she replied. "Say what you will about Uncle Max's politics and proclivities, he did run a successful business. There's a lot to admire about someone like that." Cassie nodded sagely while I stared at her for several seconds, before she leaned up to stage-whisper, "I'm fucking with you." Leaning back again, she shrugged. "Kaiser was an _asshole._ I didn't call him Uncle Max. Do you have any idea what he would've done if I did? God, you're almost as easy as the rest of them."

In spite of myself, I snorted. "Wait, what do you mean, the rest of them?"

Cassie shrugged. "Oh, I just had Clock and Kid totally convinced that Hookwolf was a father figure to me and that seeing him die completely traumatized me. They were talking about how even if Aunt Kayden was lying, at least she killed that jackass. I put on the puppy dog eyes and acted all sad and they all but tripped over themselves trying to apologize. It was hilarious."

I raised an eyebrow at that. "You're kind of manipulative, aren't you?"

She waved it off. "I told them the truth before anything else happened. I just wanted to see the looks on their faces, that's all."

"So... you were hanging out with Dennis and Chris?" I asked, hesitantly.

Her shoulders raised in a shrug. "I wouldn't really call it 'hanging out'. I was taking some stupid psychological evaluation tests at the PRT building, and when I got done, I felt like hitting some stuff. So I went down to find the gym, and the two of them were already there."

Tugging her by the sleeve, I walked to the first batch of weeds that we were supposed to dig out. Then I knelt down and pulled the work gloves on, before starting to work the trowel into the dirt.

After a moment, in spite of her earlier complaints, Cassie got down and started to help. "So let me ask you something. I thought that Shadow Stalker cunt got taken out because she killed that Sophia Hess girl. But according to the others, Sophia Hess _is_ Shadow Stalker. Also, she's apparently not dead. What's up with that?"

I let out a heavy sigh. "It's kind of a long story."

Cassie shrugged at that, pointing out, "I'm not going anywhere for awhile, are you?" She dug the trowel deep under a week demonstratively.

Conceding the point, I worked my gloved fingers under the weed that I had been working at, yanking it up as I started to explain how things had gotten to this point.

Eventually, it was time to put the tools away and go check out with the groundskeeper so that he could verify our work. The two of us were walking, each carrying one of those simple white buckets full of the weeds we had pulled, along with our gloves and tools. We were hot, sweaty, and we both wanted to get out of there.

"Hey, uhh, hold up a minute." I said as we passed Taylor's grave. "I... have to do something."

Cassie's gaze moved from me to the grave, then back again. "That her?" When I nodded, she gestured. "Whatever, do what you gotta do." Seeming to realize belatedly that she might have sounded too nice and could lose her edgy reputation, she added, "Just don't take too long. I really need a hot shower to get this shit off."

Shaking my head, I set the bucket down and walked up to the grave. "Hey, Taylor." I said quietly, crouching down to look at the stone marker. "I know I said that I'd find your dad for you, that I'd figure out what happened. I wish I had better news, but... I just don't know where to look. It's been so long, and even though people know he's not Coil now, he's still really famous. **Someone **should've seen him, reported him, by now. But there's been nothing. No news at all. I thought maybe... he might have been Defiant, but that doesn't make sense, because Defiant showed up _before_ your dad... triggered."

Sighing, I reached out to brush a finger down the name on the gravestone. "I swear, Taylor, I swear I'll do whatever it takes to find your dad and help him. I can't... I can't help you anymore. But I'll do what I can for your dad. If he's-" My eyes watered and I glanced away, briefly. "If he's still alive... I'll find him and I'll help him."

I was starting to rise, not wanting to make Cassie wait too long, when I heard the other girl shout, "Hey, behind you!"

Spinning so fast I almost fell over, I found... darkness. At first I thought the sun had somehow gone down while I wasn't looking, because it looked like night had come. Everything was dark. I could see Reach in the distance, but it might as well have been the middle of the night.

Then the darkness drew back and solidified in front of me, becoming a humanoid shape rather than an all-encompassing blackness. It looked like a man made out of near-physical shadows. A _familiar_ man at that.

"M-Mr. Hebert?" I stammered, staring at the pitch-black figure, whose form was still wispy and unclear. His face looked like it was made of smoke, and the edges of his figure were insubstantial, like vapor.

He floated there for a moment, before reaching his hand out toward me. "My daughter." His voice sounded painful, like he was talking through shards of glass. "You... you helped... you hurt her. You hurt my daughter."

I froze, my mouth hanging open in shock. "Mr... Mr. H-Hebert, li-listen. Listen... th-this... y-you..."

Where words failed me, they did not fail him. The man's anger was clearly erupting, his voice becoming even harder to understand. "You... you come here... you come here and taunt her, taunt my daughter after she's... she's..." Unable to speak the words, the shadow-man let out a loud bellow of fury and started to swoop in toward my frozen form.

Before he reached me, one of the buckets full of weeds and tools shot through his head, making the smoke-figure drift apart. It didn't really seem to hurt him, but he did turn that way, just as Cassie threw _herself_ through his form to tackle me away from him. "Move!" She shouted in my ear as we hit the ground. "Move move move!"

Shaking off the shock, I tried to scramble to my feet alongside her. "I have to talk to him! It's Taylor's father! I have to tell him what happened, that I'm not... that-"

"Doesn't seem like he's interested in talking!" She retorted, pulling herself up. "Seems more like he's supremely pissed off!"

We were both on our feet, and I pivoted to back pedal. "I have to try!"

"God damn it," Cassie muttered before putting herself next to me. To her credit, she didn't take off without me. "Hey! Hey temper tantrum dude! Listen to what she's gotta tell you, man!"

Instead, Mr. Hebert swooped toward us, his entire form expanding once more. He went from a humanoid figure to a wide blanket of darkness that surrounded, enveloped, and then enclosed us. I could see nothing, not even Cassie right next to me. I felt weightless, insubstantial, lost, and adrift.

Then, suddenly, I felt the ground rush up and smack into me. It hurt, and I groaned, rolling over and away from Reach, who was groaning as well. "Uggnnn..." I moaned before slowly lifting my head. "What..." We were in the back of some kind of abandoned gas station, judging from the rows of shelves and the counter at the front. The windows were boarded up.

"Welcome." The voice took me by surprise, and I jerked that way, staring at what turned out to be an obese bald man (so bald that he lacked even eyebrows or lashes), whose skin was so pale that I thought I could see his actual organs and skeleton through it. His face was dotted with hard little crusty spiral growths.

Still, as ugly as the man looked, his smile seemed genuine. "I trust that you aren't too hurt?"

"You..." I stared. "You're... Gregor the Snail."

"Please," the man corrected. "Call me Gregor."

"What the fuck are we doing here?" Cassie demanded, having situated herself by then. She sat next to me, staring at the heavy man.

A new voice answered her. "No idea what _you're _doing here. We thought Murk was only grabbing the other one."

Turning, I found myself looking at a woman wearing what looked like a welding mask, and a costume that was equal parts dress and riot gear. Not that her appearance should have surprised me. If Gregor the Snail was there, of course the mercenary leader was. "Faultline?" I stammered, still wondering if I should pretend to be completely innocent, as if I had no powers, or if they already knew who I was. For the moment, I would play dumb. "Y-you're Faultline, the... the mercenary."

"That's right." She nodded. "And you... are Madison Clements."

"What..." I swallowed uneasily. "What are we doing here? Where's... Mr. Hebert?"

As if in answer to my question, the shadows around the edge of the room coalesced into the man's shape, who glared at me hatefully. "My daughter..."

"Easy, Murk." Faultline held a hand out. "I told you we'd find out the truth about what happened to your girl if you helped us rescue Shamrock, and we will." She focused on me again. "So like the man said, girl, let's talk about Taylor Hebert."

**10.02**

Beside me, Cassie's eyes rolled. "Like she has to answer to _you_, you-"

"Cassie." I said quietly. "It's all right. I'll talk to them." Turning to give the other girl a pointed look, I added, "not like we have a lot of choice with all these capes around." I prayed she'd take the hint. They thought we were normal. I had to believe that, otherwise they would have had more than just Gregor watching us when we first showed up. And we likely would have been bound in some way by now.

Or not, considering that Mr. Hebert had apparently teleported us here.

Mr. Hebert. Taylor's dad. My heart sank as I saw the hate in his eyes.

"Let's start with the basic stuff." Faultline said. "Just to see how much you're willing to admit to."

"She'll admit to _**nothing**_." Mr. Hebert's harsh, glass-grinding voice spat. "She mocks my daughter's grave, taunts her ghost with the fact that Ta—Taylor is _dead_, and her punishment was... was **community service**!" The last two words came out as a bellow that sent darkness drifting over the room.

"Murk, we spoke about this." Faultline said calmly. "We agreed that she would have a chance to speak, remember? She's a girl just like your daughter, not a monster. You said that you wanted to hear her words, that you needed us to keep you calm so that you wouldn't... blow up. I'm telling you now, _calm down._ Let the girl speak, hear what she has to say." She indicated me then. "Kid, if you have anything to say, I suggest you say it."

I looked at Mr. Hebert, not at the mercenary woman. "Mr. Hebert... I... I'll talk to you. I'll talk to you, but not anybody else. Please, sir. I can't go anywhere, and I wouldn't try. I've been-" I swallowed. "I've been _**looking**_ for you, sir. I'm not going to try to run away now. If you want to talk, I'm here. I'm right here. But not with everyone else here. This isn't for them. It's not... a game, and it's not a show. We don't need an audience."

Gregor spoke up. "If it will help, we can take the other young lady to have some food."

Cassie glared back at him. "Right, like I'm gonna just leave her by herself with some guy that's so pissed off he might-"

I interrupted her. "It's okay, Cassie. Go with them. I... I need to talk to Mr. Hebert alone."

She gave me a doubtful look, and I spent a moment wondering where this loyalty had come from. But the girl finally shrugged as if annoyed by the entire situation and turned to walk away, following Gregor.

"Can you handle this, Murk?" Faultline asked Taylor's father.

The shadow-figure hesitated, then nodded. "I want to hear her words." His gravelly voice intoned. "I want to hear what excuses she gives, what reasoning the courts could possibly have for... for not _caring_ about my daughter's death."

Faultline looked between us for a moment, before nodding. "We'll be outside."

Then she left, and the two of us were alone. I stood there, facing the man whose daughter I had helped drive to her grave, the silence between us stretching on, until I knew that I had to speak.

The familiar dampness tried to come to my eyes, but I blinked it away forcefully, taking in a long breath that turned into a bit of a shudder when I let it out. "Taylor dying... It was-" My throat closed up, the words failing to come for a second. I wanted to close my eyes, wanted so desperately to stop looking into the hate-filled fury that was Mr. Hebert's gaze. "It was my fault. I could have-" Again, it became hard to speak past the lump in my throat. My hand pressed against the cracked floor beneath me before I gradually pushed myself to my feet, standing to face the man.

"I could have stopped Sophia. I could have told someone what she was doing. I... I made your daughter's life... miserable. I spent a year and a half... torturing her emotionally, psychologically... and saying nothing when Sophia hurt her physically. I thought... I thought it was funny. I liked... " My hands clenched at my sides from the sheer effort of not looking away. The man's anger was only growing with every word, but I kept going. I had to keep going. "I liked... the... power... I liked that she was afraid of us. I liked the popularity. Sophia... is damaged, crazy person. I don't... I don't know what's wrong with her, why she's... the way she is. I don't..."

Now I couldn't hold back the tears. They came unbidden, against every effort I put toward stopping them, blurring my vision, though I continued to stare directly at the man. "I do know... what was wrong with me." Swallowing past the thick lump in my throat, I continued in a soft voice. "... Nothing. There was nothing _wrong_ with me, nothing to cloud my judgment and nothing to point the blame at. It was me. Every..." My mouth worked a few times, the tears threatening to blind me before I blinked rapidly, trying to see through them, while my voice shook with each word. "E-every... thing I did, every bad thing, it was all me. They were all my choices."

"So if you're looking for excuses, or for... or for reasons, I can't... give you any that you'll like. I knew... what Sophia was planning that day. I knew, and I didn't stop her. I didn't want to do it. I... I helped find the tampons. I..." The image of Taylor being shoved into the locker, of us walking away, of me looking back and hesitating for a split second, came to mind. In that moment, I had very nearly decided to let Taylor out of the locker. I almost did. If I had followed my instinct, if I had stepped back there and opened the locker so that she could get out... or even said something to a teacher, what would that have changed? What would have been different?

Would my parents still be alive?

"Mr. Hebert..." I met the man's gaze, "I know that Taylor dying was the worst day of your life. I know that because it was the second worst day of my life. The worst day of my life... was when I found out that my parents were dead. And then... later... I found out that the person who killed them... was Sophia. So... so Mr. Hebert, when I tell you that I wish that I had stopped Sophia then... I... I could not... possibly... given... given a million years... find a way to mean it more than I do right now. Taylor... dying... was my fault... because I could have stopped it. My parents... dying... was my fault... because if I had stopped Sophia before... if I had done something before... If I had _cared_ before... then my parents would still be alive."

"I don't have any way to make it better, Mr. Hebert. I can't bring Taylor back, I swear to you that I... I wish I could, and every... every day since it happened, since Taylor died, I've wished that I could. I wished that I could take everything back. But I can't. All I can do... all I'm _**doing**_, is trying to be a better person than I was back then. You think that it didn't affect me... but it did. The person I was then, the person that... did those things... that's not who I am now."

"I know that doesn't take your pain away, because it doesn't take mine away, and she's _your_ daughter. All I can say, Mr. Hebert... is that I will never, ever forget your daughter. Her life mattered. I... I will never become that person again. I will never let myself be the person that would would let someone die. My life... whatever it becomes... wherever I go and whatever I do... I will **never** forget Taylor."

My voice turned even softer then. "I don't go to Taylor's grave to taunt her, sir. I would never mock her, not now. Not after everything. I go to... to talk to her. Sometimes I just... talk about the day, other times I talk about how I was trying to find you, trying to find a way to help you. Sometimes... I apologize. I tell her how sorry I am, how... how much I wish that we could have... that things had been different. But it's never enough. It will never, ever be enough."

"You have every right to hate me, Mr. Hebert. But if you think I don't _care_, that Taylor's death is a joke, then you're wrong. Because nothing has shaped my life as much as that... as that choice did, **because** I care. It matters to me. _**She**_ matters to me."

"I can't bring your daughter back, sir. I can't undo what I did. All I can do... is say... for whatever... whatever little it might matter... that I'm sorry. I am..." I choked a little more. "I am so... sorry."

For a long moment, after I finished speaking, there was no response. There was no relief from the man whose daughter I had helped to destroy. There was no visible acceptance of my words. The hate in his eyes had gradually turned to something worse: resignation and grief. The power of hating me, of focusing on his anger at the injustice, had, even if only for a brief time, softened his despair.

He still hated me. Of that I was certain. He hated me because of what I had helped do to his daughter, and no amount of apologies or words were going to magically erase that.

In a way, my being apologetic, my sorrow, had hurt him worse than if I had been flippant. It wasn't that he didn't believe my words, it was that he _did_ believe them, and it didn't really help. I was sorry, but my being sorry wasn't going to help bring his daughter back. It wasn't going to repair his shattered life.

"Why...?" He finally said, his voice cracking even more than usual. His voice lacked its earlier fire, and was now just... broken. "Why did you take my Taylor away? Why? She... never hurt you. She'd never..."

My eyes closed finally, tears running down my face. I had no more words. I had no answer for him, even if I had been able to make myself speak. What else could I say? I had said it all. I wasn't the monster that some part of him had wanted me to be. Yes, I still felt grief about what happened to Taylor. I always would. But I had used that grief to change my life, to become better than I had been. I didn't hate myself. I hated who I had been, but I wasn't that person anymore. I grieved because of the waste, the utter waste, that had been Taylor's death. I grieved because of my former stupidity. But I did not hate the person that I had become, only what had necessitated it.

When I opened my eyes again, the figure was gone. Mr. Hebert had left, saying nothing, doing nothing. It was all he could do, all that I had left him. He hated me, maybe he would always hate me. But he knew the truth now. He knew that I was sorry, that Taylor's death had affected me.

For what pathetically little good it did him now.

After another moment, the door into the gas station opened, and I saw someone that looked even more odd than Gregor had. He was maybe a year older than I was, with orange skin that was made even more apparent by his lack of shirt, and red hair that looked damp. He had some kind of upside down omega symbol tattoo on his chest. His eyes were pale blue, looking rather amused. "Your little friend's pretty funny, you know? Where'd you find her?"

It took me a second to deal with the rather sudden mood whiplash. My hands went up to wipe away the tears from my eyes, and I took a deep, shuddering breath before focusing on the newcomer.

Newter, that was what he called himself. I stared for a second, but caught myself before too long. "I... we met through the program." I just didn't say **which** program, leaving him to assume I meant the community service. I suppose, in a way, I_had_ met Cassie through a certain kind of community service.

"Figures, the fun ones are always crazy." He lamented. "Come on then, Faultline says we should feed you since we kidnapped you."

"Yeah... about that..." I started. "How long has Mr. Hebert been with you guys? I've umm... been looking for him."

"You and everyone else." Newter replied. "Murk, that's the name he prefers now, he joined up with us right after that whole business about him being Coil came out. Or more to the point, we tracked him down because we thought he might have... other sorts of answers." His hand reflexively came up to brush his chest where the tattoo was before sighing. "Anyway, let's go. The others are waiting."

I followed Newter out of the gas station, and toward the large, wide open doors of the attached mechanic garage. Inside was a table positively laden with food, next to an outdoor grill where girl in a red and black costume, gas mask lying next to her, stood cooking hamburgers. Cassie was there, already finishing up what looked like her second burger as she sat across the table from Faultline, Gregor, and a young woman who was wearing a green tee shirt that had a black clover symbol on the front.

In the far corner of the garage, another girl with platinum-white blonde hair, wearing a dark green robe with the design of a maze on it, stood facing the wall. The floor of the garage for about five feet around her wasn't floor at all, but grass, while the wall she was facing looked like something out of a Tim Burton movie with all the jagged edges and spikes.

Before I could stare for too long, Faultline looked up. "Okay, well, Murk says to send you back home." She paused. "Those weren't his _precise_ words, but that's the gist. So, eat up, and we'll find you a ride."

"What about the same way we _**got**_ here." Cassie pointed out after pushing her plate away.

Faultline just looked at her. "Apparently Murk doesn't really feel like spending more time around Madison here. And when he gets upset, he tends to lose track of where he's aiming his teleportation anyway. That's why you both hit the ground so hard when you... arrived."

The girl in the clover shirt nodded. "Upset as he is right now, you might end up popping out thirty feet or so off the ground."

After considering that for a moment, Cassie shrugged. "Car it is then." Her eyes brightened. "Can I drive?"

Gregor regarded her. "You are taking this entire... being abducted by notorious supervillains rather... well."

Cassie's response was a dry, "I've been desensitized by all the violence on TV."

"Indeed..." Gregor looked thoughtful, but said nothing else. Instead, he turned to me. "Our food is yours, my dear kidnappee."

"I'm not..." I shuddered a little as the remnants of torn up emotions went through me again. "I'm not really hungry." Biting my lip, I focused on Faultline. "Why did you think that Mr. Hebert would know something about whatever you were... looking into?" I glanced toward Newter and his tattoo.

The woman gave a little sigh. "Newter, please try to keep secrets better." I had a feeling that this wasn't the first, nor the last time that she would make that same request. Then she focused on me. "Better you not ask any other questions. It's dangerous. Just sit, and as soon as we're done, we'll get you home and you can forget about all of this."

As unlikely as that was, I just stared at the woman. A moment later, Newter waved his hand dismissively. "Oh calm down. Who're they gonna tell? And who'd believe them anyway? No way anyone pays attention. They'll just think they're crazy. Some story about a woman popping out of nowhere, giving away vials full of superpowers?"

"NEWTER!" Faultline had half-stood from her seat, but what she said to him next, I didn't hear. I was in too much shock.

Woman giving away vials of superpowers. Vials like... like Marissa had taken? Mr. Hebert wasn't... a natural parahuman?

What... the... hell?

**10.03**

"So are you gonna tell me what all that was about?" Cassie pressed as the two of us stood in the alley just behind the back lot of PRT headquarters. My shock had apparently been mistaken for general surprise at the very _idea_ that man-made powers could exist, rather than actual recognition. Faultline had warned us multiple times that the people they were dealing with were dangerous, and not to go blabbing our heads off about what we heard.

At least she hadn't really threatened us. That said a lot for her group, considering they were, ostensibly, villains. Or at least, mercenaries who tended to work for villains.

Part of me had wanted to refuse to leave without talking to Mr. Hebert again, to try to convince him to come back. But I had known both how useless it would have been to argue with the mercenary leader (and possibly dangerous to them continuing to think of us as normal teenagers), and how equally useless it would have been to try talking to Mr. Hebert, even if I did miraculously get past Faultline. Not to mention that if I expressed too much interest in talking to the man after what Newter had said, they might figure out that I knew something else.

At least now I knew where to look for him, when I had something to say.

For a moment while Cassie stood, staring at me, I hesitated before shrugging. "You know what it was about. Taylor's dad joined Faultline's Crew, and somehow he found out that I had something to do with his daughter's death. He was angry and he wanted-"

"Fuck you." Cassie's tone was mild, at odds with her casual cursing. "You know what I mean. They said that bit about the woman giving him powers, and your eyes got all huge. It wasn't a complete surprise either. You know something."

My mouth opened to deny it, but then I hesitated. I didn't want to burn any bridges with the other girl. She was prickly enough as it was, and the fact that she was expressing an interest in what I was doing... well, it meant something, and I didn't want to throw that away. So I chose my words carefully. "I might know something. But I promised someone else that I wouldn't talk about it without their permission. If... if I figure out more, and if you can help, or whatever... then I promise I'll talk to you about it. I'm not gonna lie and say I don't know what you're talking about, but I can't **say** what it is yet either. Can you accept that?"

The girl stared back at me for a long moment, before shrugging. She looked away and started to walk through the parking lot and on toward the back doors while muttering, "Sure, whatever."

I stood there by myself for another few moments, processing in private. If Mr. Hebert had been _**given**_ his powers, by some woman 'popping up out of nowhere', then what did that mean? What did any of it mean? Who was the woman, and would she know what was wrong with Noelle? If I could get a description of the woman from Mr. Hebert, or...

My train of thought was interrupted by a light red line that popped up, connected to Cassie. Eyes widening, I quickly attached a line between the ground next to me and the backside of her pants, giving a sharp pull backwards while calling out. "Look out!"

She fell back with a cry, barely a second before a blonde blur dove out the sky and slammed into the pavement right where she had been. I barely had time to process who it was, before Victoria spun around to stalk toward the fallen girl, bellowing, "**Where is she?!" **

"Up your ass." Cassie shot back while running her hand all along the ground. Every bit of dirt and dust that she touched flew up against Victoria's face, forming a briefly obscuring cloud, while the other girl rolled backwards and to her feet. "You wanna go, bitch? Let's go when you're not jumping me from behind."

"Victoria!" I ran that way, eyes wide. "What the hell are you doing?"

The super-strong girl had been raising her fist when my voice penetrated. She blinked, turning toward me. "Madison?" She asked with clear confusion, looking from me to Cassie and back again. "You... disappeared. You never checked out of your community service, and there were buckets and tools everywhere. I thought..."

Reach glared daggers at the older girl. "We were **both** kidnapped. But of course, _I'm_ the one that must have attacked _her._You found me out. My _master_ _god damn plan_ was to go through all this bullshit, have to stare at your fucking face every damn day, and wait until I was doing yardwork with **her**." She gestured back toward me. "Just so I could kidnap her, and_then_ walk right back into the headquarters of the people I abducted her away from. However did you break through my brilliant strategy?"

"Cassie." I started to say, though I did give Victoria a dirty look first. "It's not-"

"Forget it." Shaking her head, the girl pointed at Victoria. "You're lucky that first hit didn't land, Princess. This conversation wouldn't be over if it had." Then she started to stalk away.

I sighed, staring at Glory Girl. "If you keep treating her like a criminal at every drop of a hat, she's going to start thinking that she has no other choice _other than being a criminal._"

"She is a criminal, remember?" Victoria shot back. "She was Junior Miss Nazi."

"Was." I replied. "She's not now. She's part of the team, Victoria. She's trying to change, but if you keep coming after her every single time you get the slightest semblance of an excuse, she's not going to stay. She joined the Empire because they treated her like family. If we keep attacking her, all she's going to see is that one side treated her well, and the other side keeps blaming her for everything that goes wrong."

For a moment, Victoria just stared back at me, indecision running through her eyes. Finally, she sighed and waved it off. "Anyway, where _were_ you? What happened? Everyone's out looking."

I hesitated before sighing. "Can we go inside and talk about it?" Gesturing to my dirty clothes, I pointed out, "I was really hoping I could shower and change before getting into any of it."

We walked back through the lot and into the doors, just in time for me to find myself abruptly yanked forward off of my feet with a yelp, and into an embrace. "Madison! You're okay. You're all right."

I recognized the identity of the person currently threatening to squeeze my insides out like toothpaste then. "Sam?"

Battery let me go, though her hands remained on my shoulders as though assuring herself that I was there. "When you disappeared, we thought... I mean... you..."

Before she could go on, I found myself turned around and then pulled into another hug, this time from Ethan. The normally jovial, irreverent man actually embraced me without reservation. "Good." He said. "Good."

Blinking, confused, I looked back and forth between the pair that had become my legal guardians. "You were... worried about me?"

The two of them glanced to each other and then back to me. Ethan gave my shoulder a light pop with his fist. "Of course we were worried about you! You just disappeared. And after..."

He trailed off, blanching, and Samantha took up his explanation. "After what we knew about..." She lowered her voice a little. "About Bonesaw being a 'fan', we thought..."

I gulped at the thought, a chill running through me. "You thought _she_ took us?"

"She didn't, right? You're okay? You're... you're all right?" Ethan still looked like he was eying me, checking for surgical trauma.

"I—I'm fine." I told them. "It wasn't her, it... you... you guys were really upset?" I was still trying to come to terms with that fact.

"Why wouldn't we be?" Sam asked, her hand taking mine. "You're our... I mean you're..."

Still confused, I said rather blankly, "But you just took me in because the Protectorate needed someone to watch over a Ward so that I didn't have to explain things to some random foster family or whatever."

For some reason, Sam looked like I had slapped her. Ethan, however, shook his head. "Hey, no. We chose to take care of you. That was our choice, not some rule or whatever. We weren't following some no-name suit's orders. We _wanted_ to, kid. You were our choice, nobody else's."

I saw Sam shudder a little, before she spoke. "When we thought that Bonesaw took you, what she might... do..."

"It wasn't her." I repeated. My voice was a little dull, while I tried to comprehend what they were saying. I'd been assuming that, while we did get along, that this was little more than a job to them. Taking care of me, keeping me fed and sheltered... hell, I spent a couple nights a week back at my parents' home, and they hadn't complained. I'd thought that was because they didn't _really_ care about what I was doing as long as I was technically safe, but... but this was real, true worry. They had been afraid for me, **relieved** when I had shown up.

They... cared about me.

"Well, who was it? What happened?" Sam pressed. She still looked pale at the very thought that Bonesaw had taken me, and I realized just how afraid she had been.

Swallowing, I said, a little numbly, "It was... it was Mr. Hebert."

That made them both stop, staring at me. "What?" Ethan asked.

"Wait, so he _is_ a bad guy?" Victoria asked from somewhere behind me. "Can I get a scoresheet or something? I'm having a hard time keeping track of who's on what side."

"No, he's not a bad guy." I said quickly, before hesitating. "I mean... well technically he might sort of be since he's working with Faultline's Crew, but-"

"He's what?" Ethan's eyes widened, and he let out a chuckle. "Are you telling me that the guy that everyone was looking for back when they thought he was Coil... was with Faultline the whole time?" When I nodded, he laughed a little louder. "No wonder she refused every offer to pay her people to look for him. She said something about a conflict of interest."

"Well, apparently she wasn't lying about that." I replied with a shrug, making Ethan chuckle even more.

"Wait," Victoria piped up. "You guys were trying to hire Faultline's Crew to find Hebert?"

"Not us personally." Sam's head shook. "We were just supposed to pass along the message from higher up. Above our paygrade. But Faultline refused the job, and now we know why."

"So what happened, exactly?" Ethan pressed.

I hesitated, before lifting my arm to gesture at myself. "Can I go get cleaned up in the Wards showers before we talk about that? I mean, it's nothing that won't keep for a few minutes. Mr. Hebert has powers, he triggered, and now he's working for Faultline's Crew. The... specifics I'd rather talk about after I'm out of these clothes and feel more human."

Both of them nodded, and Battery squeezed my hand one more time. "We really do care about what happens to you." She said quietly, with a certain emphasis that I didn't fully understand.

I went to take my shower finally, soaking under the near-scalding water while I kept running through things in my head. If Mr. Hebert had been given powers by the same method that Marissa had gotten hers, then he might know something that could lead to the person or the place that the powers had originally come from. Hell, even just the fact that he'd actually, apparently, seen a _**woman**_ give him the power vial was more information than the Travelers had before.

But how could we get that information out of Mr. Hebert with how he obviously, and for good reason, felt about me? I refused to do anything to hurt the man, not after everything else that had happened, even if he had joined up with a group that worked for known and dangerous villains.

That meant that someone else was going to have to talk to him. Sundancer had been a Traveler, who were also known mercenaries. Maybe Faultline would discuss thing with her, if I could somehow put the two of them together?

By the time that I was cleaned and dressed again, I had a probable plan. I would tell Marissa about Mr. Hebert, and let her get in contact with Faultline, if possible. If she had to, she could say that she had a civilian friend that had told her about the vial thing, since Faultline was likely going to draw a connection between the two girls that Newter had talked too much to, and some other girl somehow randomly showing up and knowing about it.

I started out of the Wards room, passing Missy doing some kind of project on the computer. As I walked by, the younger girl looked up, pushing away from the computer to face me. "I—I heard you were kidnapped by Faultline. Are you okay?"

"I'm good, I just... it was Taylor's father. He's got... powers and he's working with them now." I said slowly. "He wanted to talk about what happened to Taylor. He wanted... closure."

"Did you give it to him?" She asked after a second.

I sighed, shaking my head. "I don't think so. I don't know if he's ever going to get 'closure'. But... we talked. Or I talked and he listened. Now he doesn't want anything to do with me." After a second, I added, "Cassie was abducted too."

The other girl flinched a little before shrugging. "I... yeah, I guess."

"It's not her fault that they sent Dean and Carlos away, Missy." I told her. "One thing doesn't have anything to do with the other. If we didn't have her, we'd just have one less person."

"She was a bad guy." Missy protested.

"Was." I said firmly. "She _was_ a bad guy. We have to give her a chance. She's here for a reason, right? Just... just try not to hate her so much. She's trying... sort of. You're kind of a big deal in the Wards, Missy. You've been here longer than the rest of us. If you start... if you _try _to accept her, maybe the others will too."

A long, heavy sigh escaped my younger teammate, before she nodded. "I'll... try to give it a chance."

"Thanks." I smiled. "Maybe just start with being worried about _**both**_ of us when we disappear?" When Missy nodded, I turned to head out. Time to go upstairs and explain, as much as I could, about what had happened.

As I walked, I couldn't stop wondering, _what was so special about Mr. Hebert? Why did he have to gain powers right then, at that exact moment?_

_And most importantly, who was the woman who had given them to him? _

**10.04**

Cassie and I were both debriefed about what had happened. We told them what we knew. Or, most of it anyway. By mutual, silent agreement, we left out the bit about Mr. Hebert getting his powers out of a vial.

I had two main reasons for that. First, I wanted to talk to Marissa. The 'powers from a bottle' thing affected her more than anyone in the Protectorate. That was if they even believed the idea was anything more than the ravings of a delusional man. And my second reason for not talking about it was simple. Somehow, the woman who had done this, assuming she existed, had popped into a house and out again not only under the Protectorate's noses, but under Coil's as well. That, added to the fact that she, apparently, could _give_ people powers, meant that she was probably one of the most powerful and dangerous people in the world.

_**And no one knew about her. **_

I wasn't stupid. Something like this didn't stay secret because nobody ever noticed and tried to say something. It stayed secret because people **made** it stay secret. So if I started blabbing, the most that was likely to happen was that this dangerous woman, who had already illustrated the ability to come and go as she pleased, would target me, or the people that I had told.

So, I said nothing about it. For now.

Once they were done with us, I was walking out of the building ahead of Ethan and Sam. I was using my phone to text Marissa, telling her that we needed to talk about 'those canisters', purposefully being vague enough that only she would know what I meant if anyone saw either of our phones. Call me paranoid, but, well, I was paranoid.

Just after I sent the message, Ethan called out from behind me, "Hey, Shortstuff!"

Blinking, I turned that way. "Me?"

"Yeah, you." Pointing to his truck on the other side of the parking lot, Ethan went on. "We've got an idea, let's cram into the truck and go to the store."

Looking back and forth between both of them, I hesitated. On the one hand, I really wanted to talk to Marissa about what I'd found out. But on the other hand, Ethan and Sam were obviously excited about whatever idea they had, and after our... bit of bonding earlier, I didn't want to dismiss them out of hand.

Finally, I glanced down at my phone and sent a follow-up message, letting Marissa know that I'd talk to her in a couple hours. Then I nodded and began to head for the truck while remarking, "Just so you know, if this is your plan to get rid of me, stores don't take returns on sixteen-year-old merchandise."

"Damn." Ethan snapped his fingers, coming up on the other side of the truck to unlock it. "What about exchanges? I _**do **_have my eye on a nice wall-mounted flat screen."

As we piled in, I saw Sam stretch a rubber band against her finger and snap it across the distance to hit Ethan in the arm, making him yelp. She nudged me then, winking. "I do that when he's a jerk. I'll give you a supply of them."

"On the plus side," the man pointed out while pocketing the projectile, "my rubber band collection is coming along nicely."

"That's what he thinks," Sam stage-whispered to me. "I just raid his stash to resupply my ammo."

We drove to the store, though neither of them said what we were going for. It wasn't until we were walking in, that Ethan's hand came down on my shoulder. "So, Sammy and I were talking, and it seems like... you still feel like a guest at home."

Biting my lip, I looked between them. "I... ummm..."

"It's okay," Sam assured me. "But we want you to feel like... like it's your place too. You know... you can have friends over, even if they're not in on the whole hero thing. Just let us know so that we don't come around with... work clothes on or whatever." She said the last part carefully, clearly not wanting to babble about costumes right in the store entrance.

I shrugged at that. "Pretty much all my friends are... part of the group." I said, equally carefully.

"Either way," Ethan put in. "It's your place too, funsize."

"If you keep making fun of how small I am," I shot back. "I'm gonna ask Sam for her rubberbands."

Smirking, Ethan waved off the threat. "Sure you are, Little Bit. Anyway, we want you to have _**your**_ space. That room you're staying in, it's not just like a motel room or a sleepover. It's your room for as long as you'll take it."

Sam took up the explanation then. "So, we thought we'd come here and let you pick out whatever you want to make it_**your**_ space. Paint, furniture, wallpaper, posters, blinds, whatever. We'll toss everything else and spend one of the next couple days setting up the room the way you want it."

My mouth worked a little, as I stared. "You... I... you didn't have to..." I couldn't find the words.

Ethan nudged me a little. "Just say we're awesome and let's go get you some wallpaper that says, 'Madison'. I'm thinking of a bunch of the munchkins from Wizard of Oz. You know, your people."

Scowling, I threw a punch at him, while he snickered and danced back, grabbing a shopping cart to use as a shield.

Later that night, I was standing outside of Sam and Ethan's room, hesitating. He was off on patrol, but Sam was in there, using her computer. I fidgeted uncertainly for another moment or two, before reaching out to knock on the doorjam as I stepped into view.

Sam closed down what looked like a messaging program, turning the chair around to face me. "Hey, everything all right? Sorry that Ethan had to ahhh, work, but we'll get your stuff set up asap."

"It's okay," I said quickly. "You guys didn't have to do all that. I mean, thanks... I just... that's not what I came here about."

Raising an eyebrow, Sam indicated the recliner next to the closet. "What's up?"

I took the offered seat, drawing my legs up to wrap my arms around them. "I guess I sort of need... advice?"

"What kind of advice?" Sam asked, curiously.

Hesitating, I felt the blush come up while resting my chin against my knees. "Umm... dating... advice?"

"Dating?" Sam actually grinned a little at that and leaned forward conspiratorially. "Who's the lucky guy you're dating? Anyone we know?"

Somehow managing to blush deeper, I pressed my face against my knees and mumbled into them.

The reaction made Sam smile even more, and she reached out a finger to poke me in the leg. "I'm sorry, I didn't catch that. Did you say, mmgghgul?"

Shivering, I slowly lifted my chin so that I could talk. A glance at the woman's face made me almost bury my own again, but I finally managed, "It's a girl."

Taken by surprise, Sam blinked a couple times. "A girl? You mean you're—I mean..." she trailed off then, adjusting. "Wow. I... had no idea. I mean," she added quickly, "obviously it's not a problem or anything. I just... wow."

"Neither did I." Shrugging as I admitted that, I went on. "Not until I met her. Well, not when we met, but... sort of... I... Oh god." Blushing furiously, I buried my face against my legs, mumbling, "Forget it, forget I said anything."

Sam's hand found mine. "Hey, it's okay. It's all right. This is a... new development?"

"Pretty new." I nodded. "I wasn't sure... how to talk about it, or who to ask for advice. It's... really complicated. I'm just not sure what else to do, how to... to date anyone seriously, let alone a girl, let alone..." I trailed off, sighing.

Squeezing my hand, Sam used her other to tilt my head up so that I'd look at her. "Hey, it can't be _**that**_ complicated. Look at me. I started out trying to arrest Ethan, and now we're married. I got involved with a villain. Okay, former villain, but you know. How messed up could your situation be?"

My mouth opened and then shut as I stared at her. Finally, all I could manage was a weak, "You'd be surprised."

"What's in this thing we supposed to be protecting, anyway?" Vista asked over the com the next evening.

From where I stood, on the edge of a warehouse roof, I could see the younger girl across the empty parking lot, standing next to the security guard shack at the gate.

Clockblocker responded from his place somewhere on the far side of the building, where he and Reach were. "Just some tinker stuff the mayor wanted protected. They didn't exactly share a lot of details beyond 'be here and don't let it get stolen'."

"We're just back-up anyway." I pointed out. "Penance and Laserdream are doing the real work." The two older heroes were escorting the truck from the edge of the city limits all the way to the warehouse. We were just supposed to wait there and stand guard while the truck was unloaded so that the Protectorate members could go back to their real patrol.

On the opposite corner of the roof from me, Glory Girl replied, "Crystal said she saw soldiers on the truck. Whatever it is, it's not a normal delivery."

"Could've told you that." Kid Win, somewhere high above all of us on his jetpack-thing, spoke up. "They don't have two Protectorate people escort a truck all the way to a warehouse that's protected by the entire Wards team for toilet paper and televisions."

While waiting, I thought back to the conversation with Battery the night before. I'd told her _most_ of what I could about Marissa, leaving out the parts about being from another world, and how they'd gotten their powers. I told her that Sundancer had been trying to help her friend, and that she had pulled away from her group. I explained everything about how we'd met, how I'd recognized her during the first encounter with Pandora, and how we'd started hanging out.

To my surprise, Sam didn't suggest that I leave well enough alone. She gave some advice about coaxing Marissa (not that she knew the name) to come forward so that she could apply for a pardon, as well as some general guidance about dating anyone in general, and a former villain specifically.

I knew that getting Marissa pardoned was going to be difficult, considering the hoops that we were going to have to carefully navigate surrounding her origin, but I was hoping there **would** be a way to manage it. I'd kind of like to be able to talk about my... my girlfriend with others. Hell, even thinking of Marissa _as_ my girlfriend still made me want to sigh a little dreamily.

Seeing headlights, I was pulled out of my musings. "Incoming."

The truck pulled into the lot, while the two Protectorate members flew overhead. Crystal glided down to talk to her cousin for a minute, while Penance landed on the ground next to Clockblocker and Reach.

For a moment, I watched as the truck turned around and backed up to the warehouse doors. Then the soldiers hopped out and began to unload what looked like heavy wooden pallets piled high with crates onto a waiting forklift.

Crystal came up next to me a moment later. "I don't suppose you've heard from Pandora or Dinah since the last time?"

I blinked at that, glancing toward the older girl. "Err, no. Why?"

She sighed, shrugging. "The mayor's getting really upset about the lack of any news on his niece. And her parents are... well, you passing along the 'don't worry about me' message didn't exactly make them stop worrying. I was hoping you had a way to contact them so that Dinah would at least talk to her parents directly. Otherwise... otherwise they might do something stupid."

Thinking of the finger that Pandora had given me, which was wrapped up and sitting in the bottom of my backpack at home (I had been assured repeatedly by the clone that it wouldn't go bad, which was somehow even creepier than if it did), I slowly nodded. "I think I can get a message to her."

"Good." Crystal let out a breath of relief. "Try to tell her to contact her parents somehow, because they're kind of going out of their minds." When I nodded, she put her hand on my shoulder. "Are _you_ doing all right?"

Biting my lip, glad that my mask hid my blanch, I shrugged. "I'm... getting there. One day at a time. Battery says they still haven't tracked down Trevor, which is **weird**, given their resources."

"They'll find him." Crystal assured me. "We'll find him. Even if we have to go door-to-door."

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that." I managed to chuckle softly. "Though he'd probably appreciate the attention from a cute superhero."

Somehow, I'd managed to make Laserdream blush. She floated up, gesturing. "Yeah, yeah. I better get going. Don't want to keep Penance waiting. Try to get a hold of Dinah as soon as you can?"

I nodded again, and the other girl took off.

It took another twenty minutes for the soldiers to finish unloading the truck. Victoria had joined me by then, gazing down at the vehicle. "Great, so we're all dressed up and waiting out here for nothing. Just another boring-"

Five different voices, including my own, rose together as every other member of the team shouted (most through the com),"_**DON'T SAY IT!" **_

Barely three seconds later, while Victoria was still recovering, I saw three black lines leading down to the trio of soldiers who were standing around the front of the delivery truck. "Damn it, incoming!" I called out while attaching lines to each of the three to yank them up and away from the vehicle.

As soon as I did that, there was a sudden explosion just under the front end of the truck that flipped the vehicle up end-over-end, sending flames and smoke shooting into the air while the vehicle crashed onto its side.

I yanked the soldiers that were in the air all the way to the roof, letting them tumble down behind us while giving Glory Girl a look. "You had to say it. You _**had**_to say it. We were this close." I held my fingers up a short distance apart.

She rolled her eyes. "You're too superstitious. Now let's go kick ass." She pointed toward some kind of figure that was now standing where the truck had been. It was hard to make out through the smoke. Floating up off the roof, she began to dive toward the ground where the explosion had happened.

Kid Win was coming down on his pack, while Vista approached from the other side of the lot. Reach and Clockblocker were coming up from the side of the building, the former floating on a manhole cover.

Abruptly, I saw red lines of varying intensity stretch out to each of them. Eyes widening, I focused on grabbing all five with my own tethers, yanking them out of the way, just as a handful of long black metal... coils flung themselves out toward Kid, Vista, and Glory Girl. At the same time, a red sphere about the size of a baseball shot straight at the spot where Reach and Clockblocker had been, exploding into a spray of acid that began to melt through the surrounding cement.

Unfortunately, I hadn't predicted the metal tentacle thing that was coming for me. It shot up the entire distance to the roof, snatched hold of my arm with a pair of strong pincers, and yanked me off my perch before flinging me end over end toward the far fence. As I fell, I oriented just enough to attach a line to the pavement, redirecting my descent and slowing it.

That worked for a second before my eyes caught sight of blue orb flying toward me. Grimacing, I reversed my fall into a push. A second later, the blue orb exploded, and the concussive force of that one hurtled me backwards to hit the tall chainlink fence hard enough that I slumped to the ground, groaning.

By that point, the smoke had cleared, and I could see the attacker. "Bakuda?" I managed, staring.

The bomb-tinker was encased in some kind of hard shell cocoon. It was dark red, and left nothing but her face exposed, her eyes covered with goggles. Four heavy legs made of the same material stretched slightly upward and out, then down to the ground to support the cocoon structure, reminding me of a praying mantis. In the front 'chest' area, there were what looked like a pair of metal cannons. Where her shoulders would be a pair of telescoping black metal tentacles stretched out, matched by another pair of tentacles about halfway down each side. Finally, two more tentacles stretched out from the back of the cocoon.

Hearing me say her name, Bakuda twisted around to face me, the praying mantis-like legs skittering quickly. She lifted one tentacle, and I saw it extend, the end reshaping from a pincer into a barrel, before she launched another of those explosive orbs at me, this one yellow. I barely managed to fling myself upward on a line before the yellow orb blew apart into a burst of razor blades that tore through the fence I'd been next to.

"Thought I was gone, huh?!" The crazy bomb-maker shouted, while each of her tentacles reshaped into barrels, launching more projectiles in each direction. "Guess what? I'm still here, assholes!"

**10.05**

"Tentacles and cannon boobs?!" Clockblocker yelped, taking cover behind the wall of the building. "Seriously? Whose idea was it to give Bakuda tentacles and cannon boobs?! I feel like there should be **someone** we can submit a complaint to!"

"At least now we know what you-know-who was doing with her." Kid Win pointed out, while coming down close enough to orient his backpack's cannons onto the opposing tinker. A pair of dark blue, almost black, laser beams as wide around as my fist shot out of the cannons and toward the woman, but she used a tentacle to block them, seemingly taking little in the way of damage.

I had to get back up, but my back hurt where I'd smacked into the fence, to say nothing of the general pain throughout my body from the force of the concussive bomb. My costume had protected me from the worst of it, but that still left enough pain that it was difficult to focus. My vision kept blurring every time a wave of pain went through my back. Still, I was pretty sure it was just bruised.

Blinking through the bleariness in my eyes, I forced myself to straighten once more, while Glory Girl flew down and caught hold of one of the tentacles. "Gimme two seconds to wrap this bitch up into a nice little present-" The blonde girl managed, just before the tentacle whipped downward with her still attached, slamming into the pavement with enough force to put a Victoria-sized hole in it, before whipping back upward, flinging the girl off and into the sky.

At least there hadn't been any lines, so I knew that Victoria wasn't really hurt. Probably dazed, but not hurt. Thank god.

As I saw Bakuda orienting toward Vista, I forced myself to stand, taking two steps before steadying myself. When the armored-tinker launched two more bombs toward the younger girl, I immediately attached lines between each of them and one of the tentacles.

"Sorry, Bakuda!" I called out. "But when you don't attach proper postage, your package gets-" The bombs exploded into sprays of green acid. "-returned to sender!"

She turned toward me, a tentacle swiping out low and very fast. I didn't have the advantage of advance warning that I had with others, so it nearly took my legs out from under me before I managed to catch part of the tentacle with a line and pin it to the ground. At which point, the tentacle simply extended another dozen feet in length so that the part of it that was pinned was meaningless, before continuing to whip around, colliding with my side and pitching me sideways while a fresh burst of pain.

Landing hard on my other side, my attention was broken, so Bakuda's tentacle was freed. I heard Clockblocker shout something, before Vista took a knee at my side. "Are you okay?" She asked. One of those bombs came flying in our direction, and she quickly twisted the space to send it flying off another direction.

"Mmmgood." I mumbled. "Can you twist up those tentacles?"

Vista made a face, shaking her head. "There's something organic inside them. I can't affect them. Which means she's got this huge bubble around her that I can't get through, since those tentacles keep whipping around everywhere."

Across the lot, the flaming hunk of wreckage that was the delivery truck abruptly went flying through the air toward Bakuda, as Reach took her hand away from it. The ruined vehicle slammed into the tinker with enough force to crumple the entire front half of the truck in on itself. Bakuda just crossed two tentacles in front of herself, like a person blocking with their arms, and barely moved. Those tentacles were strong enough that the full force of the truck-blow hardly affected them.

Two tentacles lashed out toward Reach, while another picked up the broken remains of the truck and flung it upward toward the hovering Kid Win. Cassie flew backwards on her manhole cover, narrowly escaping the grasping tentacles, while Chris managed to evade by rising out of reach. Apparently, even though the tentacles could extend, they did have limits to their length.

Almost at the same time, one of the back tentacles focused on Clockblocker, who was attempting to come up behind Bakuda. That tentacle reshaped itself into a barrel before it began to launch several grenades in rapid succession, forcing Dennis to take cover again and curse through the com. "I can't get close! It's like she's got eyes in the back of her head."

"Knowing you-know-who, she probably does." Victoria replied, coming back down out of the sky. This time, she flew down close enough to get Bakuda's attention, batted aside the tentacle that reached for her, weathered the explosive force of the bomb that was launched her way from one of the chest cannons, and then flew in fast and hard to kick at the woman's exposed face. Bakuda managed to twist aside at the last second, but the kick still knocked her over and sent her skidding along the ground.

It did not, unfortunately, seem to slow her down very much. Two of the tentacles drove into the ground to lever the body up once more, those four praying mantis legs getting their footing, while each of the remaining tentacles flew into a frenzy, launching those damn explosives in every direction.

Vista drew the space up behind the two of us, and we moved back out of reach of the yellow and white bombs that were sent our way.

I shook my head. "We can't get close to her. The face is her weak spot, but we can't get to it. I can't even attach lines to her shell. It's like the whole thing is organic somehow. I can get her tentacles, but there's no way I can attach enough lines to hold all of them, down the entire length."

"Lucky you." Clockblocker replied with a grimace. I could see him peeking around the corner of what was left of the badly damaged wall. "I can't even get close enough to do anything."

"I can redirect the bombs if I see them." Vista put in. "But that's about it."

"There's too many god damn tentacles!" Reach complained. "Anything I send at her she blocks, no matter what direction I hit her from."

"If that shell's organic, it's no kind of organic I've ever seen." Kid Win said, his cannons launching a flurry of shots that only managed to get Bakuda's attention, before he had to evade her counter-attack. "I've hit it with a full barrage and it's barely singed."

"No." Reach surprisingly replied. "You're hurting it, I saw the holes. And the dent from when Princess kicked her. The shell's tough, but not invulnerable, it just heals and reshapes really fucking fast."

"If Reach was a better telekinetic," Glory Girl put in. "She could wrap those tentacles into a bow and we could all go get some food. But no, she's gotta get close enough to touch the damn things, so she's useless."

The reaction was immediate. Reach flew out from behind cover, crouched low on her flying manhole cover. "Don't-" She started, jumping up off of her hovering platform as a tentacle swatted at her, before landing back on it on the other side of the attack. "Call-" She dove at the ground as another tentacle launched a bomb at her, releasing a metal ball bearing from her hand that shot toward the incoming explosive to knock it off course. "Me-" Her hand slapped the ground at Bakuda's feet, at which point a chunk of pavement about fifteen feet across and four feet thick literally tore itself up out of the ground with the bomb-tinker standing on it, flinging itself and her at the warehouse wall with enough force to blow through it. "Useless!"

There were rumblings from inside the warehouse, where Bakuda was reorienting herself. We could hear her curses.

"Guys." I managed to pick myself up, wincing at the pain. My back was killing me, my arm kept sending its own stabbing pain to remind me it existed, and it hurt to breathe too deep. "We can stop her, but we have to do it together. No arguing or bitching."

"You've got an idea?" Clockblocker asked.

I looked at the hole that Bakuda had made when she went flying through it, listening to her approach as she ranted about what she was going to do to us. "Yeah." I said quietly. "I've got an idea."

By the time that Bakuda emerged from the warehouse, stomping back out into the ruined parking lot with her tentacles waving threateningly, I was the only person she found. She stopped, smiling gloatingly as she stared at me.

"So," The mad-tinker chuckled. "Give the Wards a little bit of a fight, and they all run away."

I let my head tilt while making a pitying noise. "Aww, getting your ass kicked and thrown through a wall must've messed up your eyesight. I'm still here."

Glowering at me, Bakuda stalked closer. "So you were too stupid to run while you could."

"Meh," I replied, waving a hand dismissively. "They got bored of waiting for you to collect yourself. I'll meet up with them after I finish dealing with you."

"I sure hope you know what you're doing." Chris muttered through the com, while Bakuda's face turned almost as red as her shell from her anger.

In response, I murmured. "Just make sure you guys do your parts. I'll be fine." _I hope._ A quiet voice added in the back of my head before I could banish it.

Unable to depend on warning lines, I had to focus on watching Bakuda and her multiple arms as closely as I could. The second that one of them drove forward toward me, I attached a line between my extended arm and the roof of the warehouse, letting it yank me away from the grasping tentacle while calling down to her. "So which did you like better, being Lung's bitch or being Coil's bitch?"

I barely let myself land on the roof before instantly launching myself skyward without taking time to look. It was a good thing I did, since two of the tentacles blew through the edge of the roof and wall where I would have been standing.

Twisting around in the air to see the tinker as she launched two different explosives up toward me, I quickly used a line that stretched between the pair of flying orbs and used it to push them as far apart as I could, so that each exploded far away from me. Then I used another line to yank myself back down to the ground, ignoring the stab of pain that went through my side when I landed and nearly took my breath away.

"That all you got?" I asked. "Cuz I told the others you might actually put up a fight if there was only one of us. So far, not impressed."

Lucky me, that got her full attention. Another pair of explosives shot my way, along with no less than three tentacles. I attached a line between the very end of one of the tentacles and the furthest of the explosives, so that when it whipped around, it knocked both out of the air. Then I leapt, attaching a pair of lines between my feet and a point about midway down the nearest tentacle so that I was pulled in to land on it, and held there by the lines that kept my boots secured to it.

Instantly, my dinner threatened to tear its way out of my stomach, as I was flung up and around from Bakuda attempting to shake me off. It didn't work, my lines were too firmly attached between myself and the tentacle. But it did make me queasy. At least my breaker abilities meant that I didn't get whiplash _too_ bad.

Seeing one of the other tentacles lashing down toward me, I caught it with a line that was attached between it and the tentacle I was standing on, then leapt off of it and sideways just in time for the two metal coils to be yanked against each other.

Rolling as I hit the ground to avoid the two tentacles that drove themselves through the cement where I had been, I quickly reached out a hand toward another part of the pavement and let the line pull me along the ground and out of Bakuda's nearest reach, while maintaining my focus on the other line that was keeping the first two metal arms pinned together.

"I sure hope you guys are ready." I muttered as I picked myself up. "Cuz I don't know how much longer I can-" My words were interrupted as blinding pain erupted in my side. One of the tentacles had finally caught me, sending me crashing to the ground on my already injured arm and drawing a cry of pain from me.

The tentacle caught hold of my boot, yanking me up and sending me flying at the damaged brick wall. Grimacing, I barely managed to use a line to slow my approach just enough that the blow as I hit didn't immediately break me. It still sent waves of agony through my body, while my vision threatened to black out.

Then I was being flung toward the ground, and I crossed my arms protectively in front of my face while trying to stop myself with another line. Unfortunately, I couldn't focus on it quickly enough, and the pain as I was brought down hard into the broken pavement drove the air from my lungs, and I could feel the shattering pain as several bones snapped from the force of the impact.

I was lying in a crumpled heap, barely conscious, while Bakuda stood over me. One of her tentacles turned me over, and she grinned. "So who's the bitch now?" She demanded.

Trying to suck in enough air to breathe, I barely managed to wheeze, "I dunno about bitch..." I sucked in more air, shuddering in pain that only my adrenaline was preventing from overwhelming me entirely. "But you are easily distracted."

Before Bakuda could react to that, Kid Win came flying down on his jetpack, presenting her with a target. "Hey!" He called out to her. "Weren't you supposed to be good with bombs? Cuz so far, not impressed."

Twisting that way, the armored-tinker growled and launched two different grenades from her chest barrels. "You want impressive, try this!"

The explosives arced through the air toward Kid... then twisted around and down back through the air that Vista had taken the time to reshape, exploding against Bakuda's back with enough force to actually knock her sprawling to the ground.

She used a tentacle to push herself up, while lashing out with another. The tentacle was redirected, Vista's work again, to smack herself in the side of the head, narrowly missing her face.

The fact was, Vista hadn't been able to work on the space around Bakuda while the woman had been waving her tentacles through it. But I had distracted her long enough, kept her attention solely on me and therefore not waving wildly through the air at everyone else for enough time, that the younger girl had finally been able to shape the space the way she wanted it. After that, all I'd had to do was maneuver Bakuda into position.

Oww. Lucky me.

With Bakuda disoriented, another figure flew straight down out of the sky above her head. Two figures, actually. Glory Girl carried Reach, holding the other girl close to her chest as they dropped rapidly. By the time Bakuda finally noticed them, they were almost on top of her.

The second she was near enough, Reach put both arms out to either side, slapping the metal arms that extended from Bakuda's back.

In retaliation, the bomb-tinker twisted around to lash out with one of her other tentacles, while launching a bomb from another. Victoria swung an arm to knock the tentacle aside, then turned her back on the explosive to protect Reach from the blast before flying up and away.

The two tentacles that Cassie had touched immediately stretched themselves out to their full length and curved around toward the guard shack. As they did so, Clockblocker emerged and slapped his hands against them while activating his power.

Both metal arms were instantly frozen in time. Unfortunately, it didn't freeze the rest of her. I was too dizzy and sore to wonder how that was possible. They did, however, pin the bomb-tinker in place, those two arms fully extended and frozen.

Kid Win flew in a circle, goading her into trying to shoot him through the space that Vista had trapped. Glory Girl and Reach flew in the opposite direction, waiting for any opening to get near enough to touch more tentacles and give them to Clockblocker.

Bakuda let out a bellow of frustration, yanking a bit against her time-frozen tentacles to no avail. "Let... me... go!" She screamed. A second later, another of the tentacles moved up, pointing at her own back, and released an acid explosive that ate through the shell where the tentacles were attached. The shell burned away within seconds, revealing badly burned flesh, while the bomb-maker screamed in agony.

It did, however, burn through the part of her body that the tentacles were attached to, allowing the villain to yank herself free. She had to abandon the two frozen tentacles, and she was clearly in as much agony as I was from the way she'd been forced to acid-bomb herself.

Panting, growling in fury, Bakuda turned in a circle, taking in the sight of everyone around her. Then she brought her remaining tentacles in close to her body, pointed the ends outward, and launched a white explosive orb from each of them.

The new bombs exploded into bursts of light and sound that made everyone recoil, partially blinded. By the time we recovered, there was a deep hole in the ground, and Bakuda was gone. Somehow, she had tunneled away in that time.

At least she didn't get what she came for, and we'd taken two of her tentacles away. We'd hurt her, or rather, forced her to hurt herself.

Clockblocker reached my side a second later, accompanied by Vista. "Tether, you okay?"

I went through all the effort of managing a smile while the others landed, before realizing that the work was wasted since they couldn't see my face anyway. "I..." I managed, trying to make my hand form into a thumbs up. It wasn't cooperating. "I'm... fi..."

Darkness took me then, as my consciousness fled.

**Interlude 10 – Tattletale**

"Make a corridor on the count of three." Lisa instructed her newest teammate, while she kept an eye on the uniformed State Patrol officer approaching the gate of the massive fence that she and the rest of the team were crouched on the far side of. A camera buzzed above them as it turned to survey the street in the opposite direction, but it couldn't pivot down, and the camera at the other end of the fence that _could_ have seen them wouldn't turn their way for another thirty seconds.

"One..." She watched as the officer punched in the security code, waving tiredly at the gate camera. "Two..." The gate clicked and began to open to admit the man. "Three."

Beside her, Vacate, real name, Elias Anders, raised his arm and waited until she, Grue, and Freezetag put their hands against him before creating the time-freeze tunnel. It stretched beyond the now-frozen officer, through the open gate, and straight on toward a dark part of the grounds, near a rose garden.

Together, the four remaining Undersiders jogged down the tunnel, slipping carefully past the frozen state trooper and through the open gate until they reached the far end of what Vacate had been able to make.

There, they crouched. Brian, otherwise known as Grue, pointed up and to the left, where a camera was frozen in mid-pan. "Are you sure this is gonna work?"

"It's dark out here." Tattletale replied. "The cameras are relying on heat signatures. Blanket us in darkness every time it points our way and we'll be fine. All we need is a straight shot at the back door and I can get us inside.

"Still don't see why Vacate can't just pop us there." Freezetag idly muttered.

"Fuck, girl, like I said before," the boy himself replied, "I can't go making corridors over and over. It's like I got this set distance of how much tunnel I can make before it runs out and gots to recharge. That was a long tunnel just to get us inside these grounds. Gimme a few minutes before you jump on my ass about making another one. A man's gotta take some time to regroup, you know? It's like just after-"

"That's enough." Grue interrupted. Lisa could hear the annoyance in his voice. He was edgy. They'd lost Bitch, and then lost Regent. Grue and herself were the only 'original' Undersiders left, not counting his little sister Aisha/Freezetag, who had joined a couple of months earlier. Vacate was still fairly new, having joined right before the Leviathan fight, and they hadn't quite fully 'meshed' as a team yet.

But they were getting there.

The darkness from the older boy poured out and created a wall between the Undersiders and the camera. Then Vacate dropped the tunnel, bringing everything back into normal time. If anyone had been near enough, they would have noticed the patch of space that was much darker than everything around it. Fortunately (by design), none of the guards were facing the right direction, or were too far away.

Nodding to Grue, Tattletale started to lead the way, down the length of the massive, sprawling grounds. The four of them jogged quickly, keeping the cloud of darkness between them and the constantly moving cameras until they reached a small orchard of apple and plum trees. There, they crouched once more. Grue, as the only person who could see through the cloud that was stopping the cameras from noticing them, held up his hand. "Ready to go again, Vacate?"

The other boy took a few breaths, leaning his head from one side to the other to crack his neck. "Hells yeah, I'm good to go, baby."

Once again, they held onto the boy. Grue held his free hand up and waited, watching the nearest camera through his darkness until it was safe, and then dropped his hand. As soon as he did, the darkness fell away, revealing the rest of the grounds to them, as well as one of the back doors of the mansion.

The second he could see properly, Elias used his power to make another corridor appear, all the way across the grounds and up to the doors, before sagging a little. "Long... fucking... tunnels." He complained. "Y'all motherfuckers need smaller backyards."

"This isn't exactly a normal sized property, you know." Tattletale pointed out mildly.

He just grinned at her. "I wasn't complaining 'bout _**your**_ backyard, sweets."

Repressing the urge to shudder at the very thought of becoming intimate with anyone, let alone someone like Vacate, and getting to know every last one of his secrets, Tattletale managed to simply smile faintly and shake her head. "Eyes on the prize, skeevy."

That only encouraged him. "I thought that's what I was doing." Vacate replied, smiling incorrigibly until Grue used a hand to firmly turn him around and pull him along through the tunnel. "Oww! Hey, I'm going, I'm going. Yeesh, ain't nobody here 'preciates me."

The tunnel led the Undersiders straight to the door. Tattletale waited until Elias took down the tunnel, and then put her hand up against the keypad. Her fingers danced over the buttons, but the pad buzzed its denial.

"I thought you could get through this thing." Grue hissed.

"I can." She replied calmly, putting more numbers in. "I have to get the wrong code a time or two before my power can tell me what was wrong about it."

This time, the pad beeped an affirmative, and she tugged the door open. "Let's go."

Once they were inside, Freezetag and Grue took the lead. The whole group already knew the exact path they were taking. They'd been over it enough times.

Making their way through the truly massive kitchen with its three different stoves, they were nearly out when the door ahead of them opened. Another uniformed officer walked into view, a half-second before his head was enveloped in Grue's darkness. Then Freezetag smacked her hand against the man's side, freezing him with his hand in mid-motion toward the radio on his shoulder.

After Grue released the darkness, Tattletale reached up, carefully plucking the man's radio away without touching him. It could come in handy.

Then she looked at him. "How many other guards in the house?"

Barely able to move his lips, the guard mumbled, "Noh eelling ooh." He didn't have to. Lisa opened the floodgate of her power and let it do the work.

_Worried: his partner just went upstairs and won't be coming back down until he finishes his patrol, which takes another ten minutes. The rest of the guards are outside and have no reason to come in, unless he can get a message to them somehow. _

"Right, only you and one other guy, got it." Turning off her power, Tattletale mimed patting the confused man on the cheek without actually touching him, then slipped around his body to move on with the others. "We're clear all the way to the office. Ten minutes before his partner comes down."

They continued through the mansion with more confidence then. There was still a chance of running into the building's normal inhabitants or staff, but the potential problems were greatly reduced.

Eventually, the four of them reached their destination. Stopping outside of the closed door, Lisa glanced back at the others to make sure they were ready, then pushed the door open and stepped through.

The handsome, older man at the desk in the office that they stepped into was typing rapidly on his computer. He wore glasses, Lisa noted, unlike his public appearances.

"I told you, Bart," the man said without looking up. "You don't have to ask me if you want to make a sandwich. I don't care what that bear of a sergeant of yours says. I've got plenty of-" Finally looking up, the man froze at the sight of the four costumed criminals. Then his hand grabbed for the phone on his desk, but Grue covered his face in darkness so that his hand missed the grab, and Lisa moved forward in the interim to take the phone away.

When the darkness was dismissed, the man had stood up and backed against the wall. He glowered at them. "How dare you break into my _home._"

"Well, you know, it's only your home until you lose the next election, Governor Randall." Lisa pointed out with a smile. She was opening up her power again, letting it take in everything it could about the man.

_Afraid, glancing upward as though looking through the ceiling. His children were upstairs, the ones who still lived with them anyway. _

_Cautiously hopeful look to his eyes. He didn't believe that this group was all that violent, but why had they broken into his home? _

_Briefly indignant look. Where was his security? Were they doing their jobs or not? _

_Pained expression: She was right, the next election was going to be tough. He'd probably manage a squeaker, but it would be close. _

"You're the Undersiders, correct? From Brockton Bay." Governor Richard Randall gazed at them. "I hope you realize that attacking me is going to take you from smalltime, straight to the Bird Cage."

Tattletale just shook her head. "Attacking you? We're not attacking you, Governor. In fact, didn't you hear? We've become very useful lately. Helping deal with Leviathan, getting rid of Calvert before he caused the state any more embarrassment..."

_Grateful look that lasted only for a second: Anyone who helped fight an Endbringer was brave (or possibly suicidal), and they had contributed to the city's rescue. Really hopes that being the leader of the state during that successful attack helps in this next election, in addition to all of his gratitude for the low casualties. _

_Fearful grimace. Do they know about Calvert? They can't possibly. It wasn't his fault!_

Frowning, the governor looked between them. "Are you trying to tell me that you snuck past my security and broke into my home as **upstanding citizens?**" His voice was incredulous.

"Funny you should mention that, Governor." Tattletale replied, giving the man her best vulpine smile. "After all, that cuts right to the chase of why we're here."

The man frowned, processing that for a moment. Then he got it, shaking his head. "No. Absolutely not."

"Yup." Tattletale informed him. "We're here because you're going to issue a blanket pardon for all of us, excusing us for every crime we've committed up to this point."

"You're insane." The governor spat. "Why would I do that?"

_Desperately holding on to hope. Maybe they think they have leverage of some other kind. Maybe they're fishing. Maybe they don't really know anything. _

Cutting the man's hope off at the knees, Tattletale airily replied, "Oh, I dunno, maybe because you don't want anyone to find out about the close, personal relationship you had with the man who broke the Endbringer truce to kill the parents of the hero who was pretty much single-handedly responsible for keeping the fatalities as low as they were." She made a few disappointed tutting sounds. "I don't think that'd go over very well with the voters, Governor."

Her smile turned a little pitying then. "I'm afraid Calvert kept detailed records and evidence, Governor. Recordings of your phone conversations, all the deals you two made while you were getting him set up into his position as head of the fancy new Parahuman Investigations team in exchange for aaaaalll that money he gave you for your campaign."

Governor Randall sputtered indignantly, his eyes wide. "I had no idea that he was Coil! I didn't know what the hell else he was up to."  
><em>Truth, to a certain extent. The governor was willing to deal with dirty money, but he thought that Calvert was just dishonest and shady, not the monster he ended up being. <em>

"You never thought he was an angel either." Tattletale pointed out, before shrugging. "Anyway, you really think the voters are going to care? Think you'll ever be elected as a high school treasurer, let alone Governor, once this gets out?"

For a moment, the man remained stubborn. Then he sighed and relented. "Fine. Four pardons in exchange for your silence."

"Five, dickface." Freezetag interjected. "You're pardoning Bitch too."

"I can't let the Lindt girl out of prison." Randall protested. "She's in the Birdcage. There's no coming out of there."

"Let us worry about getting her out." Tattletale told the man, letting him believe they had a plan even though she had absolutely no clue how they were going about doing that, yet. "Either way, she gets the pardon. Even if she can't be free, you're gonna clear her name just like you're clearing ours."

It took another few minutes to hammer out the details, including the fact that the governor was going to have to get the President to sign off on a pardon concerning the actual bank robbery. He was urged to be convincing on the subject.

Tattletale kept one eye on the clock, until it was time for the guard upstairs to start heading down. Then she set a burner phone down on the desk. "Make sure your guards don't report that we were here." She instructed the man. "And call on the first number in that phone when the pardons are handled. Trust me, we'll know if you try to jerk us around. And if you do..."

"You'll ruin me." The governor sighed. "I get it. Just get out of my house."

They did,leaving much the way they had come. Before too long, the group was changing out of their costumes in the corner of a parking garage about three blocks from the governor's mansion, the girls changing on one side of the van they had driven up here in, while the boys changed on the other side.

"Can't believe that shit worked." Elias slumped back into his seat as soon as everyone had piled into the van. "Free and clear. We're really gonna be free and clear."

Brian, in the driver's seat, pulled the van out of the lot. "You really think we can pull off this new business idea of yours, Lisa? I need the money, and the legitimacy, if..." He glanced toward the backseat, where Aisha was already focused on some game on her phone. Brian wanted custody of his little sister. Not just for a weekend or whenever his estranged mother didn't want her, but permanently. To do that, he needed money, preferably honest money.

"It will." Lisa promised him, reaching into her pocket before withdrawing a small object. "I even had cards made up already, just so you could all see them." She held the card out for the older boy to see.

Glancing at the card in the light from the nearby streetlamp, Brian chuckled. "You think anyone's gonna take us seriously?"

Taking the card back, Lisa nodded. "We'll make them take us seriously." She said quietly while looking at the card in the palm of her hand.

It was an embossed, very professional looking card. In the top middle of the card there was an eye symbol similar to the one on the chest of her costume. Spreading out from the eye and forming a border along the edges of the card was a wispy line of black that imitated Grue's darkness. Two hands, similar to the symbol for Freezetag, were on either side of the card, while a long, vaguely rounded rectangle spread from one end to the other, forming a sort of inner border and providing the symbol for Vacate's tunnels.

In the middle of the card was a phone number and an address. And above that, the most important part. It read:_Undersiders – Parahuman Detective Agency._


	11. Arc 11: Conspiracy

**11.01**

I awoke to the feel of a cool pillow against my cheek. Starting a little, I turned to find myself in what looked like a hospital room, though there were no windows.

"It's all right." A voice from the other side of the room spoke. When I looked that way, I found Panacea sitting in the chair by the door, sipping from a glass of water. "Sorry," she went on. "I needed a place to sit down for a minute and your room was quiet."

Again I had a chance to wonder how I had known so confidently and immediately that the person there was Amy and not a Pandora clone. Even before she had spoken, upon first seeing the girl, I had known who it was.

"What... ummm..." I sat up in the bed. "What happened?"

"According to Clockblocker, you were a reckless, suicidal idiot with a death wish," Amy replied. "Then I healed you."

I knew that normally, Panacea didn't heal people without their express consent. Luckily, part of joining the Wards had been signing a contract stating whether or not I would allow healers like her to work on me, so that had been covered. "Thanks, but what about Bakuda?"

A look of annoyance crossed the other girl's face. "Gone. Assholes."

Blinking, I pushed the blankets away and swung my legs off the side of the bed. "Err, sorry? We did our best to catch her, but-"

"Not you guys." Amy waved her hand. "I meant the PRT. I promised Bakuda I'd heal her, and they wouldn't let me get near her. They just kept putting me off, saying they had other priorities and that the crazy bomb-maker could wait. But if they'd just let me heal the bitch, she could've gone into the real prison and then fucking Bonesaw wouldn't have gotten to her."

My mouth opened and then shut as I stared at the girl. "They were stopping you from healing her? But why?" I'd wondered about that, but it had been a distant concern, since I figured that Amy was just that busy. But to hear that she had been prevented from healing Bakuda was troubling.

Amy shrugged, her annoyance still obvious. "Hell if I know. Ask Piggot. The order to stall me had to come down from her."

I paused a little, frowning at the floor before looking up. "But if Bakuda thinks you broke your promise-"

"Trust me, I know," Panacea interrupted, sighing heavily. "Why do you think I'm so pissed off? Now our house has a bunch of those new investigation people crawling all over it, just waiting for the crazy bitch to make her move." Her scowl deepened. "I'm really fucking tempted to take out a newspaper ad that says, _'Hey Bakuda, not healing you wasn't my choice. Here's the address of the person that made that bonehead decision.'_"

Wincing at that, I rose from the bed, glancing down at the simple medical gown. "How, umm, how long has it been? And, I take it we're not in the hospital? Since I don't have, you know..." I gestured up at my uncovered face.

"Don't worry, it was only yesterday. You slept through what was left of the night and all morning. And we're in the private medical wing in the PRT building." Amy confirmed. "I just had to heal a bunch of guys that went snooping for Bakuda in her old hideout and got face-fulls of acid and fire for their trouble. Then Piggot wanted to yammer on about whether or not I could take apart that shell Bakuda's got if I get my hands on it, since it's supposed to be biological." She snorted then. "I told them I needed a drink and then I hid in here. They're probably still looking for me. But you know, if I had to listen to Piggot for another minute, I was gonna do something drastic."

"Piggot wants to put you close enough to _**Bakuda**_ to touch her?" I stared at the other girl. "Is she **mental**? Has she just completely lost her mind?"

Before Amy could respond to that, the door opened and Dennis stepped in. He blinked at the sight of me standing there in the hospital gown and then gave me a thumbs up. "Looking good, Clements."

Flushing, I reached over to grab the nearby pillow and threw it at him. "Go away, I have to change. Err, wait..."

"There's clothes in the closet." Amy confirmed, standing up. "Go. We'll wait in the hall."

"Yeah, ahhh, just so you know," Dennis added while backing out of the room. "Photon Mom wants to talk to you when you're up and around."

"You know she hates that name." Amy pointed out mildly while following him out. "Plus she's not even being a superhero, so you should call her Mrs. Pelham, or something."

They closed the door on their way into the hall, and I moved to the closet to find a pair of sweatpants and sweatshirt that had been provided. The shirt was almost big enough to drown me, but I'd make it work until I got something of my own. Then I found a pair of slip-on shoes and walked to the door.

I'd barely emerged from the room before I found myself hoisted up off the floor and pushed firmly backwards. Ethan stood there, holding me easily against the wall as he gave me the worst fake scowl I'd ever seen. The edges of his mouth kept trying to twitch up, ruining the effect he was going for. "Now listen, munchkin. If you don't stop getting hurt or kidnapped, I'm going to lock you in some kind of padded room."

Somewhere behind Ethan, Dennis remarked, "If she doesn't stop throwing herself into danger, she might _need_ a padded room."

I stuck my tongue out at both of them. "I did what needed to be done, that's all. I was the one that couldn't contribute to actually beating her, so I was the distraction." Sighing then, I added. "Too bad she still got away."

"That's not your fault," Ethan assured me before finally letting me slip back to the floor. "If anything, it's Piggy's fault for putting Bakuda in the hospital and then forbidding Amy there from healing her. It's like she wanted something like this to happen."

Amy, standing a few feet away, muttered something under her breath before waving her hand. "Anyway, I better go before they find me again. The real hospital's expecting me."

Ethan's hand found my arm and he began to tug me along. "And we are going to get Little Miss Suicide debriefed before we head home."

As I was all but dragged down the hall, I protested, "I'm not suicidal. I just like helping!"

"Yup," Dennis announced. "Definite mental disorder."

The next night, I stood in the back lot of a rundown motel that looked as if its better days had been thirty years earlier, and it had been downhill ever since. This was a place that didn't just charge by the hour, but probably had fifteen minute slots as well.

This was where the message had said to meet Dinah and Pandora. It had appeared in my e-mail twenty minutes after I'd whispered the request into the clone's severed finger for Dinah to contact her parents.

Finally, I extended my hand and used a line from my gauntlet to the edge of the building to haul myself up and to the side of the window of the room that the message said to meet them at. Using my other hand, I tapped against the window.

It opened a moment later, and a young girl with red hair—Dinah, I realized belatedly, waved me in. "Come on, before someone sees you."

Slipping through the open window, I took a moment to blink at what I found inside. Computer equipment all over one side of the room, covering the provided table. Fast food bags across one of the two beds, and on the other bed... Emma.

"Tether!" My former friend, whose natural hair matched Dinah's dye job, almost jumped off the bed. "You came!"

Before I replied, I used my left thumb to press a button that had been added to my gauntlet. When I spoke afterward, my voice became slightly different, just enough that I wouldn't instantly be recognizable. "Yeah well, who could turn down an invitation to meet a stranger in a broken down motel in the middle of the night without telling anyone where I was going?"

"We're not strangers," Dinah pointed, picking a fast food bag up off the bed and offering it to me. "Whopper?"

"I'm... I'm good," I replied, shaking my head. "Dinah, did you call your parents?"

"I will," the girl promised. "But this was important. There's something you need to know about."

Before Dinah could go on, the connecting door to the other room opened. "Is she here, is she here, is she here?" I noticed Emma shrink back and pull the blankets up like a shield, her eyes wide with fright.

Then I saw her. The girl that burst into the room, full of smiles and giggles, her white and pink party dress drenched in blood.

"Bo-" I almost called her by the name she was known for as a part of the Slaughterhouse Nine. "Riley?"

Clapping her hands with delight, the medical tinker bounced up and down. "She knows me! See, I told you she knew me."

I turned my stare from _**Bonesaw**_ to Dinah. "You... you have B-Riley here?" I demanded.

Dinah shrugged, looking a little pained. "Surprise? Don't worry, I know what I'm doing. Anyway, this isn't about her."

"Come on, come on, come on." Riley's hands were on my arm, starting to tug me. I had to restrain the urge to yank my arm back in terror at the very thought of the girl touching me. "You've _**gotta**_ see my new experiment. Uncle Jack never thought I could do it, but I knew I could with the right specimen, and-"

Finally I pulled my arm free and looked at Dinah incredulously. "She has fucking specimens?!"

"Hey!" Riley's smile dropped briefly as she scolded. "There's _**children**_ present. You can't curse. I thought you knew better than that."

"Uhh, sorry..." I flinched, trying not to whimper at the thought of Bonesaw being annoyed with me. "I was just surprised to hear that you have... experiments."

"I guess it's okay." The blonde girl finally decided after a moment of consideration. "Even Uncle Jack forgot himself and cursed sometimes. But you better not do it again, or you might have to get your mouth washed out with soap."

"She's just experimenting on Pandora." Dinah put in, as if that was supposed to be better. "Riley, remember our agreement? She'll come see whatever you want to show her, but you have to let us show her the other thing first."

"Oh poo." Riley sighed, folding her arms as she sulked a little. "I thought you did that already. What's taking so long?"

Dinah seemed to hesitate a little, her eyes closing briefly as her brow furrowed with concentration. Then she focused again. "Now that she's here, why don't you get your best experiments ready to show here? This shouldn't take long."

"Weeeeellll..." Riley seemed to consider for a moment, shifting from foot to foot. Then she smiled. "Okay! I'll get ready. Knock before you come in!" Her finger shook as though scolding me again before she darted back through the door.

"Are you serious?" I hissed at the younger girl once the door was closed. "You have her here, experimenting on Pandora?"

"See?" Emma sounded smug from the other bed. "I told her it was a bad idea."

"I said I know what I'm doing." Dinah sounded exasperated. "She's not running around doing god knows what now, is she? She's here, and she's only experimenting on someone who can consent to it, and who can undo anything she does. Panda has complete control of her own body. _Trust me._"

Emma had slid out of the bed by then. "Miss... Ummm... Tether... I... can you tell my dad that I'm okay?" She glanced toward Dinah as though looking for permission before continuing. "Just tell him I'm alive and that... and that I..." Tears were forming in her eyes. "And that I hope I'll see him soon?"

I hesitated before nodding. "Sure, I... can do that, if it'll help." I saw the grateful, desperate look in my old friend's eyes and flinched inwardly. She was really frightened. Not that I could blame her, given the situation.

"Anyway." Dinah had moved to the computer at the table. "Come here, you should see this."

I stepped that way, standing behind her chair. "What am I looking at?"

"Not looking," she replied. "Listening. This is a phone conversation between Director Costa-Brown and Dragon. I... I can't really tell you how we got it, but it's important."

She hit play, and I heard the voice of the armor-tinker first. "There's another one."

The next woman to speak, I assumed, was the PRT National Director. "No. Don't tell me that. I thought you had the problem handled."

"As did I." Dragon's voice replied. "Somehow, it happened again."

A long sigh came from Director Costa-Brown. "Who is it? Tell me it's not a hero again. Fucking tell me it's not a hero."

"It's Rachel Lindt." Dragon answered.

I blinked at that. "Hellhound, from the Undersiders?" I blurted. "What does she have to do with-"

"Shh." Dinah had paused the recording, squinting at me. "Just listen. Do you have any idea how hard it was to get this? Pay attention."

She started it once more, and the director's voice came back. "Hellhound? That doesn't make sense. Does she even know anyone in there?"

"Her team was apparently a source of annoyance for Lung." Dragon's reply was hesitant. "I assume that is related. The how continues to escape me."

"Figure it out." Director Costa-Brown ordered. "And fast. Figure out who's doing it, how they're doing it, and shut them down. Otherwise, there's going to be a panic."

"Perhaps we should inform-" Dragon started, sounding cautious.

"No." The director was firm. "We tell no one else. This stays between us. Do you understand? You will tell no one."

"Understood." Dragon's reply came after a brief hesitation, followed by a sigh. "Then what do we tell them about the Lindt girl?"

The director's answer came after a moment of clear consideration. "Let them think we railroaded her into the place. That it was all our idea. She was part of the team that helped get Panacea kidnapped, right? Let them think it was punishment for that."

"That might cause a problem," Dragon pointed out. "What she did wasn't extreme enough."

"Better that than the alternative," Costa-Brown snapped. "Or would you prefer that people find out the truth?" Dragon was silent on the subject, giving no response, so the director continued. "Because I for one, would rather have some people bitch about how unfair we were to one no-name girl, than have someone, anyone, find out that _**somebody**_ inside of the Bird Cage has figured out a way to teleport other people into it, and that none of us have any idea how the _**fuck **_they're doing it."

**11.02**

My hand covered my mouth, while I stared in shock at the computer screen. For a moment, I had no words, nothing that could adequately portray my disbelief and confusion. Finally, I managed, "The... the Bird Cage... someone's... someone's pulling people into it?"

"That's what it sounds like." Emma put in from her place on the bed. "Weird, huh?"

I glanced that way, then back to Dinah. "What hero are they talking about?"

The younger girl hesitated. "That's part of the next recording. But Emma should leave the room for it."

My ex-friend blanched, wilting a little. "Please, please don't make me go in the other room." She all but whimpered her plea. "It's... it's horrible. Please."

"It's okay." Dinah gestured to the main door. "Panda's waiting for you in the hallway. She'll take you up to the roof for fresh air."

Sliding quickly off the bed, Emma hesitated next to me. "Umm, I hate to... to ask you for anything else..."

I looked at her, and tried not to think of how easily she'd betrayed me, of how easily she'd betrayed _Taylor. _No matter my personal feelings, she was still a person, still a normal teenage girl. "What is it?"

"I have this ummm," Emma paused. "This friend. Well, she's not really a friend, not anymore. But see, she—umm. Her name is Madison Clements."

I froze at that, but tried not to let on. "Okay?"

"See, well, her umm, we stopped being friends." Emma sighed a little. "It was stupid, but the point is, I... I heard that her parents died. They... they died during the Leviathan attack. And well, I was hoping that... I know you're busy, but if you could just... check on her? I don't mean like a... like a permanent bodyguard thing or whatever, just... just look and make sure she's okay? I... sort of have a lot of time to think in here and... and well, I think I really fucked up. But even if we're not friends, I wanna know that someone's at least, you know, checking."

I stared until Dinah nudged me with her foot, before starting a little. "I... right, yeah. Clements. I'll see what I can do."

"Thanks." Emma managed a weak little smile, a ghost of the grin I knew, and then started out of the room.

When the door closed behind her, I looked at Dinah. "Are you _**sure**_ she wasn't taken over by a Pandora clone?" Something else struck me then. "Wait. Wait a minute, did I hear you call Pandora... **Panda?**"

Dinah had the decency to blush a little at that. "It's a long story. But nicknames make people feel wanted, and I want Panda to feel wanted. Besides, it's unique, and it's absolutely nothing like Panacea or Amy or anything. It's all her."

"Seriously, Dinah, what are you doing?" I asked her while shaking my head. "You've got Pandora _and_ Bonesaw? Are you **collecting** S-Class threats now?"

The twelve-year-old girl shrugged at that. "I'm doing what my power says is the best thing I can do. You're just gonna have to trust me. Anyway, come on. Riley's gonna get impatient soon. I don't think she's used to being told to wait."

I shuddered a little at the thought of Bonesaw being annoyed, and looked back to the computer. "You said there was another recording?"

"Yeah..." Dinah trailed off, then straightened and offered the chair to me. "You better sit down. This recording is from two days ago."

Unsure of what could be shocking enough in _this_ recording that she wanted me to sit down as compared to the last one, I took the offered seat nonetheless. After I did, Dinah pressed play.

The voice of Dragon came in. "Assault and Battery are asking questions about Trevor Clements."

My hand shot out to hit pause and I stared at the girl next to me. "Why the _hell_ are Dragon and Director Costa-Brown discussing my brother?" Dinah's response was to stare at me pointedly until I flushed and pressed play again so that the recording could go on.

Director Costa-Brown replied, "Tether. They're asking questions on her behalf."

"Yes," Dragon confirmed. "Perhaps it's time to tell them something about the boy's disappearance?"

"Absolutely not." The director's response was firm. "We are not letting anyone know about our problems with the Bird Cage. Do you have any idea what kind of panic it would cause if anyone knew that someone in the Cage was capable of reaching out and dragging people in?"

This time, I couldn't help but pause the recording again, while I screeched, _**"The Bird Cage?! Trevor's in the Bird Cage?! **_How? Why? What the hell? That's impossible! People saw him after the attack. He dropped his classes, he went home to get his stuff, he... he..." I trailed off, mouth working. "No... no..."

Dinah's voice was sympathetic. "Sorry, Madison." Slowly, she reached out to hit play again, letting the voices continue.

"It's clear that whoever pulled the Clements boy in," Dragon was saying, "was attempting to take his sister instead. The boy was a mistake. Perhaps that can tell us something about how the teleportation was accomplished."

"So far it's told us nothing." Costa-Brown sighed. "And I'm still paying for the favor of letting those neighbors see the kid raid his house and take off. This is already turning into an unbelievable headache, one we **cannot afford** to let become public knowledge."

"They faked it," I muttered under my breath, reeling. "They faked Trevor taking off, with a double or... or whatever."

Dragon was talking then. "They've made no further attempts on Tether. I don't know if that's a lack of ability or interest."

"Good. We need her." The director was silent for a moment before she continued. "The boy, is he still alive?"

"Only due to Hannah's efforts," Dragon replied softly. "She has defended the boy against all who would seek to harm him. It's lucky for him that they were both taken at the same time."

Costa-Brown's voice was wistful. "Miss Militia was one of the best heroes we had. Losing her is a real blow."

I thought Dragon's voice carried a tiny bit of a rebuke. "She is not lost. We know precisely where she is."

The director's reply was stiff, clearly uncomfortable. "She may as well be. Unless you've thought of a way to get them out again, safely."

"No." Dragon sighed. "The prison was designed, purposefully, to be inescapable. The idea that someone within would pull others in after them, those who had not been convicted, was not a scenario that I imagined."

There was silence for a few moments, and I was about to try speaking, when Costa-Brown cleared her throat. "Figure this out, Dragon. Figure out who's pulling these people into the Cage, how they're doing it, and how we can stop them before we lose anyone else. Do you understand? This is your _top_ priority. Solve it."

"Understood." Dragon's agreement came a second later.

"And don't forget," the director pressed, "don't let anyone—"

"I will tell no one about any of this," Dragon interrupted. "You have my word."

The recording ended then, and I slumped back in the chair, staring at the computer screen for several moments without actually seeing it. "My brother..." I said slowly. "He's in the Bird Cage. He was... they took him. They were trying to get me, and they got him instead. They took him. They took him to the Bird Cage. And it's my-"

Dinah's hand covered my mouth before I could go on. "No, it's not." Her voice was firm. "Don't even say it. Try not to think it. I thought you should know what's going on. At least as much as they know, anyway."

I looked that way. "Do you know who did this? How they're doing it? With your power, I mean."

Her head shook. "Sorry, that's not how my power works. I can't see things like that."

Sighing, I nodded. "I figured it couldn't be that easy." For a minute, I just sat there and thought. "Hannah, Miss Militia, she's alive too. She's protecting Trevor." I'd known they hadn't found her body, only her armband, but that wasn't exactly unheard of after an Endbringer attack. Especially one where so many bodies were washed out to sea.

Dinah's hand squeezed my arm. "At least he's alive?"

"For now." I said. "But if Dragon's right and there's no way out of there, how much longer can he last?"

"As long as Miss Militia can," Dinah replied. "And she's really tough." She hesitated before glancing to me. "Besides, if someone can pull people _into_ the Bird Cage..."

"Maybe there's a way to pull them out again." I straightened at that. "But that means finding out who did it, and how they're doing it, and..." I sighed. "Wow. This is... this is a lot to deal with."

"Tell me about it," Dinah muttered.

"I've gotta think about all this." I started to straighten from the chair. "Gotta figure out... what I'm doing. Who to talk to."  
>"Whoever you choose..." Dinah started. "Make sure you can trust them completely, okay?" When I nodded, she gestured. "You better go see what Riley wants to show you. If you leave without visiting her, she'll get upset. I'm... sort of trying to teach her morality and cause and effect and stuff like that. It's... really slow."<p>

I raised an eyebrow at that. "You're trying to teach **Bonesaw** about morality?"

"No." Dinah said firmly. "I'm trying to get rid of Bonesaw, and bring back Riley. Part of doing that is making her face what she's done. But for now, we have to... be careful. That means keeping her as happy as we can."

"Right." I sighed. "I'll go see what she's got."

I don't know if it would have been better or worse if I'd been able to focus more on what Riley had shown me. She was clearly doing _extensive_ work with Pandora, positively giggly over the several ongoing experiments she had going.

Whatever she was doing, it excited the psychotic young girl, and kept her happy. Which meant she wasn't experimenting on other people. It wasn't a perfect solution, but it was the best I could hope for. Either way, I hadn't been able to really focus. I was too busy reeling from what I had learned.

Still, as I walked through the alley gate and into my family's backyard, I had to wonder if Dinah really knew what she was doing. She was trying to rehabilitate Bonesaw, of all people. What was next, Behemoth?

Stopping at the shed, I changed out of my costume and into the spare set of clothes there.

I still hadn't decided who I could talk to about this that had any authority. Marissa and Dennis I trusted completely, and I was getting there with Ethan and Sam. Maybe... Maybe I could trust them on this? They had been reaching out to me so much, had been trying so hard to make me feel accepted. They'd done far more than I'd been expecting.

Maybe... maybe I could tell them what I knew. Maybe I could trust them with this.

The back door opened, interrupting my thoughts. Mars stood there, beckoning with a hand. "Hey, you made it."

"Your message said it was urgent." I replied. "What's going on?" I wanted to talk to the other girl about everything I'd found out, but it had sounded as though whatever she wanted to tell me couldn't wait.

"Well..." Marissa stepped out of the way to let me into the kitchen.

I stepped through, then stopped at the sight that greeted me. An auburn-haired girl in a wheelchair sat near the kitchen table. She slowly lifted a hand to me. "Umm, hey."

Mars waved her hand back and forth between us. "Mads, this is Jess. Jess, Mads."

"Genesis." I realized, extending my own hand to shake the other girl's. "You're here."

"Yeah..." Jess sighed. "Mars convinced me. Trickster's wrong. He's... gone off the deep end. He's so obsessed with saving Noelle that he's ready to let everything and everyone else burn to do it."

"What about Ballistic?" I asked.

Jess glanced toward Marissa before replying. "Luke's on our side, but he's staying behind to keep an eye on Krouse, just in case."

"I take it you didn't exactly tell Trickster and Noelle what you were doing?"

Jess bit her lip. "I left a note. I hope... I hope Noelle actually listens to it. She's been getting... irritable. Irritable and... paranoid. It's getting worse."

Noticing my distracted expression, Mars reached out to touch my shoulder. "Hey, what's up?"

I shook my head. "I'll talk about it later. It's... important, but what about you guys? What are you gonna do?" My hand waved. "I mean obviously Jess can stay here, but I mean further than that. Do you... need help? And hey, what about Shadow Stalker?"

The two girls exchanged looks before turning back to me. It was Jess that spoke. "Krouse is keeping Shadow Stalker close to him. She's like a bodyguard or something."

"A bodyguard?" Marissa stared at her friend. "Who's she protecting him from?"

"It's Krouse, who knows?" Jess shrugged. "Anyway, we ummm, we do have a plan."

"You do?" I looked back and forth between the pair. "What are you gonna do?"

Marissa's voice was firm. "We're gonna do what we should have done a long fucking time ago. We're gonna tell the truth."

I blinked at that. "Wait... you mean..."

"I'm tired of being afraid all the time." Mars confirmed. "I'm tired of worrying about anyone finding out who we are. I'm sick of not being able to be myself. Hell, I'm sick of not being able to be around _**you **_anywhere but here." She glanced to Jess and then back to me. "So we're going to the Protectorate. We're going to tell them how we got here, and everything about Noelle."

"Sure," Jess put in with a shrug. "I mean, if you can't trust the Protectorate, who can you trust?"

**11.03**

"You know, Tether, if this whole superhero thing was part of some long term plan to eventually lead all of us to this dark and creepy abandoned boatyard so you could kill and eat us..." Clockblocker trailed off, still gazing around the aforementioned dark and creepy boatyard that surrounded us. We were standing on board one of the wrecked and rusted fishing boats.

"You'd be impressed by my cunning and forward thinking?" I asked, cursing the fact that batting my eyelashes would do nothing with the mask in the way.

It was the next evening, after I'd had a chance to discuss things with Jess and Mars, go home and sleep, and spent the rest of the day thinking. I'd called for the others to meet me here, without telling the adults where they were going or why.

"Well, I sure would." Reach interlinked her hands behind her hood. "After all, I wasn't even a good guy when you would've come up with that cannibalistic plan."

"I'm a forward thinker." I agreed, head bobbing.

From where she stood, a bit to the side of where we were, Glory Girl shook her head. "Not that all this talk about eating each other isn't just really spiffy conversational material, but are you going to tell us what we're going here yet?"

"Almost." I held up two fingers. "We're just waiting for a couple more people."

Vista, sitting up near the prow of the rusted boat, blinked. "What do you mean, a couple more people?" She pointed to herself, me, Clockblocker, Reach, Glory Girl, and Kid Win, who was sitting up on top of the cabin roof. "We're all here."

A new voice replied to that from ship gangplank. Or rather, the simple board that we were using as a gangplank. "She's referring to us." Sundancer crossed the board and stepped up onto the ship, and I was momentarily distracted by the thought of just how well Marissa filled out her costume.

"Oh, well then," Clockblocker waved a hand. "You could've just said we were waiting for your girlfriend."

I started to nod automatically. "Yeah, I guess I co—wait, what?" My face grew heated as I stared at him. "What—you-I never..."

"Oh please." Dennis looked at me. "Raise your hand if you knew Tether was getting romantically involved with her 'contact' from the Travelers." Every hand went up.

Blushing, I scrunched down a little and mumbled, "I'm not that bad about it."

"It was more the look you'd get when you said 'contact' and how you were going to 'talk to her'." Dennis kept making air quotes with his fingers.

"We do talk!" I protested, ears burning.

"Sure, you talk to all of us," Chris said from where he was sitting. "But you don't get that look when you're talking to me or Clockblocker or anybody else."

Still blushing, I waved a hand. "Aaaanyway, we are totally not here to talk about my love life."

"Aww." Glory Girl pouted. "And this evening was just looking up too."

"I'm... kinda surprised that you're okay with this," I had to point out to the other girl. "Isn't your family really ummm... I mean really..." I was trying to think of a way to say it without being insulting.

"Anal retentive about black and white morality?" Victoria offered before shrugging. "Sure. Bad is bad and good is good. But... she really helped out with Leviathan, and... well, I've been..." Her head tilted fractionally toward Reach and then back to me. "I've been doing a lot of thinking on that subject lately. So, are you still a villain?" She asked Sundancer.

Marissa shrugged helplessly. "I didn't really consider myself one when I was one. I... it's a long story. I was... trying to help someone I care about."

"Good intentions are paved, and all that." Victoria waved a hand. "Tell you what, don't be an evil bitch, and I'll give you a chance."

Mars glanced toward me and then back to Glory Girl. "I... sure, okay, not being an evil bitch. Check."

"Of course, if you hurt Tether..." Victoria trailed off, mouth turning into a predatory smile. "Then all bets are off."

"Exactly." Dennis said from where he was standing. "You wanna be a bad guy turned good. All the more power to you. But you make Tether sad..."

He trailed off, leaving Vista to finish with, "Then we're all gonna have words."

Flushing, I threw my hands up and squeaked, "I am not five years old! I don't need a bunch of people protecting me. Besides, we are _not here to talk about my relationship." _

Chris had the gall to snicker. "Nah, but it is a pretty good side-bonus."

Dennis looked back toward Marissa as something obviously occurred to him. "Wait, you said 'us'. Tether said 'a couple of people', and when you came on board, you said she was referring to 'us'."

Nodding, Mars extended her arm and held it steady while what looked like a beautiful red and gold phoenix swooped down out of the sky to perch there. The majestic bird straightened up, regarded us cryptically, and then spoke. "Hi."

I smirked at my teammates. ""Aha, _now_ you look surprised. Team, this is Genesis. Genesis, the team."

"Okay, that? That's really fucking cool." Reach put in. "You have got to settle a bet though. Are you a shapeshifter, or what?"

In response, Genesis somehow managed to make the phoenix smile enigmatically.

"Isn't **she** still a bad guy?" Victoria wanted to know.

"She's had the same reasons as me." Marissa glanced toward the bird on her arm. "So did Ballistic. We're changing our minds. But he's staying with Trickster to keep an eye on them."

"Them?" Reach remarked idly.

"Long story. Not getting into it." Genesis replied, stretching her wings out briefly and shaking them. "The point is, we're not here about that. Or what we used to do. We're here to help Tether with her problem."

"And what problem would that be?" Dennis looked toward me questioningly.

I took in a long breath and let it out again. I'd decided to talk to them about what I knew because they were my team. They were my _friends. _If I trusted them, even Reach, to have my back with something like Bakuda, then I needed to trust them now, with this. "Let me start with... anyone who wants to walk away, at any time, do it. This... this is big, and... and I won't think less of you for having a survival instinct."

Chris snorted. "I think you pretty well took care of anyone who might've had a survival instinct when you chose this horror movie set waiting to happen to meet at."

Coughing, I waved a hand. "Anyway, the point is, if you need to leave, go ahead. But... see... first of all..." I was hesitating, unsure of how to break this to them. "The PRT is... they're keeping secrets from us."

A loud, obviously sarcastic feminine gasp came from Clockblocker, as he clapped his hand to his heart in supposed shock. "Noooooooo. I refuse to believe that! I refuse! The PRT cares about us. They are completely open and they tell us absolutely everything that we- Okay I can't even keep that up. They'd refuse to tell us where the bathroom was if they weren't afraid that we'd pee in the hallway."

"This goes a bit above and beyond what they normally don't tell us about," I said dryly. "See, it's... it's about the Bird Cage."

"Hah!" Reach suddenly exclaimed. When we looked at her, she pointed to Genesis's Phoenix. "Bird Cage. Bird. I get it." She complimented Jess. "You're funnier than they give you credit for."

I explained what we had found out, what Dinah had shown me. I told them about how Miss Militia was still alive, and how she'd been taken into the Bird Cage along with my brother, and how that was the real reason that Hellhound, from the Undersiders, had ended up there. I explained everything that we knew about it.

Genesis and Sundancer already knew. I'd told them the truth already, wanting them to know before they went through with telling the Protectorate who they were.

It wasn't that I distrusted the Protectorate or the PRT itself. Clearly, there were problems. There would be with _any_ organization. But, if I tried to look at the situation that Dragon and Director Costa-Brown were in, I could sort of see where they were coming from. If they told people that the people were being pulled into the Bird Cage, there'd be a complete outcry. People would demand that the Cage be shut down. But what would they do with the inhabitants? What _**could**_ they do? And that wasn't even counting the panic that would run rampant at the very thought that, at any minute, **anyone** could be teleported into what was essentially hell.

Yeah, objectively speaking, I could see why they were keeping it secret. But fuck objectivity, I wanted my brother back. And they should have told the people it affected. They should have told _**me.**_ My brother had disappeared because whoever was doing it happened to have targeted me. I deserved to know that. I deserved to know where my brother was, not have it covered up.

Once I was done talking, Clockblocker let out a low whistle. After that, for a moment, no one spoke. We just stared at one another.

"So... so what are you gonna do?" Victoria finally asked, arms folded across her chest as though she was cold.

I looked at her, paused to consider my words, and then shrugged. "I'm gonna find out who's doing this, _how _they're doing it, and I'm gonna beat the crap out of them, and then use it to get my brother back, along with everyone else that doesn't belong there." I hesitated then. "But, I could use some help to do it. I don't even know if-"

A small hand found my back, as Vista spoke from beside me. "We're with you."

I looked at her. "You realize how dangerous this is? The Director herself, _**and Dragon**_, are trying to keep it secret. Not to mention what'll happen if the bad guys, whoever they are, figure out we're looking for them. This isn't normal Wards stuff."

"You're our friend, and we're a team." Vista said firmly, repeating herself. "We're with you."

Swallowing a thick lump in my throat, I stared at the others. "No one else has to-"

"You heard the girl." Dennis waved his hand toward Missy. "We're with you."

Staring at the sky for a second, Victoria finally sighed and shrugged. "Sure, why not. If we get fired, we can always form our own team. Not like I don't have experience being a private hero."

Chris gave me a thumbs up from his place on the roof of the cabin. "Can't let you run off and get in trouble all by yourself. Not after we spent all this time getting you trained into being a decent teammate."

Finally, I looked toward Reach. She gazed back at me, eyes serious. "Well, I don't know." She began solemnly. "After all, my loyalty to the PRT and belief in the system is just... iron clad."

"This is serious." I said to her. "You can back out now. If we get in trouble, it's one thing. If you do, you could end up in Juvie."

"And you wouldn't?" She shot back. "You're on probation too." When I was silent, she nodded. "That's what I thought. Fuck you, I'm part of this team. It's my choice."

"So now what?" Vista asked, curiously.

I bit my lip. "Now... now we do what Dragon can't. We figure out who broke the Bird Cage."

"Hey, you." Sam greeted me as I came in the front door a couple hours later. We hadn't really gotten anywhere other than making a few preliminary plans, and agreements on codewords to use since we didn't want to use the coms to talk about any of this.

I'd changed already, before making my way into what had become my new home. "Hey, did I miss dinner? Please?"

"Ha ha." Sam gave me a look from where she was stacking envelopes at the desk in the corner of the living room. It was an ongoing joke between us, considering she wasn't exactly the world's greatest chef. Ethan, on the other hand, was actually a pretty good cook. But when it was Sam's turn to cook, like tonight, we either ordered out or suffered.

"You got some more fanmail by the way." Sam said, waving a couple of the envelopes. They wouldn't have been addressed to me, or to this location, of course. People who sent actual physical fan letters did so by addressing them to the PRT building, and _they_ had people go over every piece of mail with a fine-toothed comb for anything suspicious before passing them along.

"They didn't send money this time, did they?" I asked, hopefully.

"'Fraid so." Sam indicated one of the open envelopes. "Eighty bucks this time."

I sighed and waved a hand. "Usual thing?"

"I'll drop it at the charity when I take Ethan's and my own." She promised with a chuckle.

The front door opened behind me, and the man himself came in. "Hey, did I miss dinner?" He sounded hopeful.

Sam threw a stress ball at him. "Jerks. You're both complete jerks. My food isn't _that_ bad."

"Puppy, you know I love you." Ethan stepped around me and gathered Sam up against him, kissing her forehead. "But your food... well, you know that ugly bulldog down the street, the one that eats his own poop? I offered him some of your 'casserole' from last week, and he turned it down."

"Aaaallright, all right, all right." Sam shook her head, flushing. She did lean into Ethan, and I caught her tiny little smile when his arms encircled her. "We'll go out then. Heaven forbid I torture the two of you with my cooking."

"Sweeeeet!" I pumped both fists into the air. "Goodbye Mystery Dish of Charcoal and Shame, Hello Ricardo's Oven Baked Lasagne."

Rolling her eyes, Sam shoved Ethan and grabbed her keys. "Of course you two already know where we're going."

"Know where we're going?" Ethan echoed. "Hell, we already called ahead to reserve our table and order the appetizers."

Huffing indignantly, Sam stalked to the door. "Jerks. You're both jerks, aaaaaaand I hate you."

Grinning at me, Ethan held his hand out. I slapped him five, and then the two of us followed Sam through the door and out to the car.

As I walked, I resolved to tell both of them the truth about the Bird Cage investigation, and what had really happened to Miss Militia. They deserved to know that their friend was still alive, and that they were being lied to.

I would tell them everything that we knew about it. I'd gotten lucky, in the grand scheme of things. I could have been handed over to some faceless bureaucrat who was only going through the motions to keep their boss happy. But we actually got along. I still missed my parents, I would _always_ miss my parents, but this... being with them, it was pretty cool.

Ethan and Sam were people I could trust.

**11.04**

"Okay, you've got us out here," Ethan remarked as the three of us stood in the middle of the empty park down the street from their—our home. It was about an hour after we'd finished dinner. "You wanna tell us what this is all about, now?"

Sam nodded from where she was standing, eyebrows raised curiously. "Yeah, since when are you afraid to talk about stuff in the house?" Her brow knitted in a frown. "Wait, do you know something?"

I raised both hands to stop them. "I don't _**know**_ anyone's listening, but... well, better safe than sorry in this case."

Still frowning, Samantha reached a hand out to brush my shoulder. "What's up with you, huh? I didn't think you were the paranoid type."

Taking in a long breath as I stared at the grass, I let it out again slowly before looking up. "It's about my brother, and Miss Militia."

"Hannah?" Ethan looked lost. "What does Hannah have to do with your brother, Ewok?" That was his newest name for me, since I was supposedly tiny and adorable, but fierce.

After another moment of hesitation, I started to talk. I told them about the recordings that Dinah had shown me, and how the rest of the team was in on helping me get Trevor and Hannah, and anyone else, back out of the Birdcage.

When I was finished, Ethan was scowling. I thought, briefly, that he was actually angry at me, until he cursed. "Fuck. I knew that damn place was a disaster waiting to happen."

"What else were we supposed to do with the worst supervillains?" Sam asked with a helpless shrug.

Ethan shook his head. "That's the point, we didn't try other things. We just shoved them in that hellhole to fight amongst themselves and forgot about them. And now it's biting us in the ass. Worse, it's biting **Hannah** and the midget's brother in the ass. We've gotta get them the hell out of there. Now."

Sam's hands waved helplessly. "How, exactly? If Dragon can't figure out a safe way to do it, and she's in charge of the place..."

"Maybe she can't figure out a safe way that doesn't involve letting other people know what's going on." Ethan pointed out. "There's gotta be ways for her to let teleportation happen, if they'd just tell a teleporter, lower the defenses, and let him pop in there to get them."

Sam sighed. "Maybe it's not that simple, I dunno. Who's to say one of the other, nastier bad guys won't take the opening and escape while the defenses are down? Maybe that's the whole reason they're doing this, to coax Dragon into taking down the defenses so they can get out."

"So let 'em!" Ethan threw his arms up. "Let 'em out, then. Isn't it better to get Hannah and Trevor back and safe, than just leave them in there on the off chance that some thug makes a jailbreak?"

Sam was shaking her head. "Some of the people in there are... they're monsters, Ethan. If any of them got out, a hell of a lot more people would suffer."

"So what are we doing then?" Ethan demanded. "Just letting Hannah and Trevor rot in there? How many have to get trapped before it's enough to do something about it?"

While poor Sam flinched from that, I whistled sharply. "Guys! We **are** doing something, remember? Trust me. We're gonna find out who's doing this stuff, how they're doing it, and make them reverse it to get Miss Militia and Trevor back."

The two of them looked at each other, and then Sam reached out to take Ethan's hand, squeezing it. "I don't suppose telling you to let us handle it would do anything, so... how can we help?"

"Right now?" I hesitated before shrugging. "Just be careful and... don't get teleported away?" I offered the last bit a little weakly. "I kinda like having you guys around."

"Same goes back to you, Wicket." Ethan's voice was firm. "Keep us informed, and _**be careful. **_You or anyone else find anything, or get any lead, you tell us. And no doing anything too stupid by yourselves. Got it? You wanna do something stupid, you come find us."

"Yeah," Sam added. "We want in on that stupidity."

"I promise." I looked between the two of them. "If we find out anything, _when_ we find out anything, I'll let you know."

"Good." Ethan ruffled my hair. "And we'll see what we can do on this end." Before I could speak, he added, "**Without** letting anyone know what we know. No sense rocking the boat before we have all the facts we can get."

Sam was nodding slowly, though she seemed distracted by something. "Right. We'll... figure this out without anyone else getting sucked into the prison."

"That's the plan," I agreed.

"For the record," Ethan announced then, after we stood in silence for a few seconds. "I reserve the right to bitch-slap Costa-Brown across the face for making us believe that Hannah was dead."

"Let's focus on getting her back, first." Sam brought her husband's hand up to gently kiss his fingers. "Then we'll worry about who messed up." She looked at me then. "Thanks for bringing us in on this. Thanks for..." She swallowed. "... for trusting us."

All I could do was shrug self-consciously. "Hey, you take care of me. And, well, you deserved to know the truth about your friend. I couldn't just lie about something like that, even by omission." Sam was staring at me, with a strange expression. I frowned back at her. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing." Her head shook. "Nothing. Let's head back in. I think everyone needs some sleep."

I nodded slowly, and started to move. "Right, sleep." While I was walking, all I could think about, was how in the hell my little group, even with Battery and Assault, were supposed to figure out what was going on with the Birdcage, when the woman who _designed_ the place was completely baffled.

It was a sad, strange time when the fact that I knew where one of the Slaughterhouse Nine was experimenting on a living, breathing biological weapon was _not_ the most stressful secret that I had.

"It appears to be an ancient writing implement of some kind." Chris leaned in close, gazing intently at the object in my hand as if it was some ancient caveman tool. "Perhaps used by prehistoric man in time immemorial."

"It's called a pencil." I replied dryly, poking him with the eraser when he leaned even closer. "And I seem to recall you using one just last month, to draw the designs for the jetpack improvements."

"Like I said," Chris waved a hand vaguely. "Time immemorial, last month, whatever."

Two days had passed since I'd explained everything to the others. Strangely enough, Reach had been the only one of us who actually had an idea of how we could figure out what was going on. Apparently, Kaiser had been worried about being sent to the Birdcage, so he had begun to take steps to deal with the possibility. That involved hiring some local, retired cape of some kind who had supposedly known some things about the construction of the place, to come up with a way to get out again. Apparently the guy had come up dry, which had pissed off Kaiser. But Cassie still thought he might know more than we did.

She hadn't known where the man lived, or his name, but she remembered what he looked like, and that Kaiser had always met him here at the mall, since the man was some kind of fiend for frozen yogurt. She and a couple of the other Empire people had been tasked with running security to make sure their that Kaiser's conversations with the man were uninterrupted.

Which meant that now Chris and I, as well as Cassie, who was off getting food, were hanging out in the food court of the mall, which had just reopened a week earlier. Our table was in the far corner, near the huge, floor to ceiling windows that overlooked the parking lot, and far away from where anyone else was sitting. We could, however, see the frozen yogurt place across the way.

Cassie, Dennis, and I had spent hours yesterday hanging out around here, with no luck. Dennis had been busy today, so Chris took his place. And after an hour of waiting, our guy had shown up.

Now, all we had to do was wait, trail him home to figure out where he lived, and then visit him later in costume to find out if he actually knew anything we could use.

I waved the pencil back and forth in front of Chris's face. "It's called keeping notes offline so certain paranoid and snoopy people with access to all kinds of super-tech don't find them."

"Really?" Chris raised an eyebrow, tilting his head around to look at the notebook on the table. "Cuz it looks like a bunch of doodles around your girlfriend's name."

Blushing deeply, I covered Marissa's name with a hand. She and Jess had both let the team know what their real first names were, reasoning that their specific circumstances meant it hardly mattered. They weren't _from_ this world, so knowing their first names, at this point, wasn't going to give anyone on the team enough information to do anything with, even if they'd wanted to make a betrayal like that.

Cassie arrived at the table then, dropping the tray full of large soft pretzels and drinks down between us. "Is she still scribbling that other dyyyyyy..." My glare had her trail off. "Dime-Store lesbian's name?"

My eyes rolled. "That wasn't really much of a save, you know."

The other girl ran her hand back through her short blonde hair, an obvious nervous gesture. "I did the best I could. And hey, don't I get some credit for keeping my mouth shut at the boat?" She demanded while grabbing the nearest pretzel.

"Yeah, I meant to ask about that," I admitted. "I was kinda surprised that you _**didn't**_ get all..." Trailing off, I picked up a pretzel and gestured to it. "Bent out of shape about it. I mean, not that I'm complaining, but..."

Shrugging self-consciously, Cassie took a large bite of the pretzel, clearly using the time while she was chewing to stall before responding. "Shit, for most of my life, most of what I knew about right and wrong came from pretty fucking biased sources. It ain't like my family's all love and roses for everybody else, but being gay happens to be over the line, you know? They hate nig—black people. They hate Mexicans, Ki—Jews, Japanese, what-the-fuck-ever that isn't white. Even white people that don't hate the... uhhh... rest. Race traitors or whatever."

She went quiet for a moment, chewing another bite. "Used to be, I'd call you a rug-mu—I mean, a lot of nasty shit. Maybe I still think it, sometimes... maybe I still sorta get queasy when I look at you and think of two..." Cassie shuddered. "I can't help it. Can't help the reaction. But I can help what I say, a little. So, uhhh, don't get me wrong, it still seems fucked up and nasty. But then again, I still think pretty nasty shit whenever I look at black people or whoever else. I just... I try not to say it."

"Anyway, that's why I didn't say anything back there at the boat. Cuz I'm constantly trying not to _**say**_ the shit that pops into my head anyway."

Chris's eyes were wide. "The you we get is the one that's trying _not_ to say everything the instant it pops into her head?"  
>"Cram it up your ass and twirl." The other girl shot back, blushing self-consciously.<p>

"Oh yeah, model of restraint, you are." Chris nodded sagely, before yelping when Cassie punched him in the arm.

"Well, umm, thanks," I said, a little awkwardly. "For not saying anything, even if it still makes you uncomfortable."

Cassie shrugged, staring down at the table. "Gotta rethink everything else I knew. Why not add fags to the list?" When I cleared my throat, she sighed and slumped in the seat. "Fuck, sorry. You know what I mean."

"I know." I agreed, taking one of the drinks. "Thank you, Cassie. Seriously. You're trying, I get it. I'm not gonna jump all over your case for a slip."

Her gaze met mine for a moment before she shrugged. "Whatever, just don't start trying to kiss me or some other gay shit." Her hand waved dismissively. "How's our guy doing?"

I glanced idly across the food court, toward the older man in the tweed suit that Reach had pointed out earlier. "Still just sitting by himself, eating that yogurt."

"You really think we can follow him home without getting caught?" Chris asked, tapping the tray nervously with his fingers.

Cassie shrugged. "If he figures out we're following him, we'll deal with it. At least he lives close enough to walk."

"And that's something you're sure about?" I pressed.

"Kaiser used to have somebody watch the street the guy walked down on the way up to the mall, then call ahead to let him know the guy was on his way." She confirmed with a short nod.

"Looks like he's about to have company," Chris pointed out, before biting into his pretzel.

Cassie and I both glanced that way again, and saw what he meant. There was a black guy, thin and rather wasted looking, taking the seat across from our target. Something about him nagged at my memory.

"What's that n—ahh, guy doing there?" Reach asked with a frown.

"Dunno." I shook my head. "But our guy doesn't look happy to see him. And... I know that guy from somewhere..."

"You do?" Chris glanced at me.

"Yeah... I just can't..." It came to me then. "The night at the mall, with Pandora and those two Merchant thugs. That's him. That's the ummm, the guy, Vacate. That's Vacate."

Eyes wide as he stared at me, then glanced toward the couple across the food court, Chris hissed, "What's _he_ doing with our guy?"

"I dunno, but I doubt it's a social call." I hesitated. The Undersiders weren't _technically _wanted anymore. Somehow, they'd convinced the governor to grant them a pardon. Still, something wasn't right about this.

"What now?" Cassie asked. "We grab him anyway?"

"I don't-" that was as far as I got before I saw Vacate stand up after the guy. They started to walk away, and I muttered a curse. "Come on, let's go."

We started to walk after the pair, while I tried to figure out what was going on. My eyes moved around at the various people around us, but Vacate was the only Undersider whose face I knew. Were any of the others around, or was he alone?

The pair reached a service corridor ahead of us, and we came around the corner just in time to see Vacate put his hand on the man's back. My eyes widened at that. "Shi-"

It was too late. They were gone. One moment the two of them had been right in view, and in the next, the service corridor was empty.

Chris and Cassie both stood beside me, and we gazed helplessly down the hall before I pointed. "There, the open door on the right-hand side. Only place they could've gone except back into the mall."

Left with no other choice if we wanted to find out what the hell was going on, the three of us started to run that way. It was probably useless, but what else could we do?

And more importantly, why in the hell were the Undersiders abducting the guy that we needed to talk to?

**11.05**

"What the hell are the Undersiders doing here?" I asked aloud as the three of us ran down the hall.

"Obviously, the same thing we're doing." Cassie replied. "Trying to get the dog bitch out of purgatory."

"How'd they find out about our guy, though?" I shot back. "I doubt he has a website that says 'ask me about how to escape from the superest of max prisons.'"

"Tattletale," Chris answered from my other side. "When in doubt, it's always Tattletale."

The open door led to a warehouse area full of a maze of boxes. In the distance, past several rows of enormous shelves heavily laden with crates, I could just make out the open door of a loading dock.

"That way." I pointed and started to go, but Chris caught my arm.

"Here." He passed me a white ski mask that he had pulled from the backpack he had over one shoulder, and I saw that he and Reach were already wearing theirs. Carrying around full costumes had been impossible to do while remaining incognito, so we had compromised and brought these simple masks, along with a couple other toys for Chris to use if we needed them.

Hesitating for just as second, I finally grabbed the mask and pulled it on. "People are so gonna think we're robbing the place if they see us."

"Better than more people finding out who any of us are." Chris pointed out.

I thought about pointing out that the Undersiders obviously already knew who _**I**_ was, but other than that, he had a point. Anyone could be out there. I just fixed the mask and then ran for the loading dock doors.

The three of us sprinted around the corner just in time to nearly run down the poor guy that was hauling a cart full of boxes marked as fragile. At the last second, I leapt to one side, while Reach and Kid Win leapt the opposite way, giving the cart room to slip through.

Then we were at the large open doors that led into the lot behind the mall. I could see a small collection of semis parked along the left side, and to the right, there was... "Got 'em!" I pointed toward the spot near the edge of the lot, right where the pavement turned into weeds. Vacate and the man we had been watching were standing out there, the former bent over and panting.

"We've gotta separate them before he recovers." Kid was already pulling one of his tinker-pistols from his pack.

Standing on the other side of me, Reach glanced toward the nearest semi before smiling. "I can handle him. You just get them away from each other." She leapt down and moved toward the trucks

Vacate was already reaching out toward the man next to him, but I planted a line against our target's pants and bodily yanked him backwards and down, out of the former Merchant's reach. The thug looked surprised briefly, taken aback by what probably appeared to be his companion stumbling back and falling.

That particular illusion was probably spoiled when the man started to slide backwards along the pavement, dragged along by another of my lines.

Realizing something was up, Vacate paused as though focusing his power. Fortunately, before he could escape, something massive came crashing down out of the sky, slamming into the ground where the newest Undersider had been standing.

Reach had floated the trailer of a semi up and over, flipped it to be vertical with the open doors pointed down, and then brought it down on top of Vacate, trapping him inside the walls of the now-standing trailer.

Sounding pleased with herself, the other girl announced from where she stood, "Line-of-sight teleport out of that, bitch!"

Jumping down from the loading dock, Kid Win and I were approaching the man, who was just starting to pick himself up and off of the pavement, when everything went dark.

Grue. Damn it. I still hadn't figured out why I couldn't even plant lines on my own clothes when his darkness surrounded me. Normally, even if I couldn't see my shoes, I could at least put lines on them, because I could feel them against my feet. But Grue's darkness completely no-sold me. It was like it turned off my power completely.

I felt lost, wandering in that darkness. I'd taken two steps after the darkness came, and then I might as well have been on another planet. I'd completely lost track of where Kid Win and Reach were, and all I could do was try to stumble forward, cursing the darkness generator under my breath.

Abruptly, the darkness vanished. I blinked at the sudden light, orienting myself and taking in the new scene.

Ahead and to the right, I could see Reach lower herself back to the ground. She had apparently used her own shoes to lift off and escape the darkness.

Naturally, _her_ power wasn't broken by Grue's.

Chris was about ten feet to my left, frozen in place. His hand was extended and pointed down, holding one of his pistols toward the left shoe of Freezetag, who stood a foot away and managed to look sulky even with her mask. She gave an obvious yank against her shoe, which had been covered in some kind of fast drying glue. "Lemme go, damn it! That's my schtick." Apparently, Kid had managed to glue the girl's foot just before she froze him. Pretty good considering the darkness.

"I'm pretty sure you're going to have to let him go before he'll let you go, Tag." A new voice pointed out, as Tattletale emerged from behind the vertically-standing trailer that encased her other teammate.

Grue joined her, both of them in costume, and the two of them stood there staring down myself and Reach, who had landed next to me.

"Tell me that's not containment foam he just used." Grue addressed us.

"Doesn't look like it." I answered honestly. "But I'm not the tinker. Where's the guy you were after?"

Tattletale let her head tilt to the side, confidence radiating from her. "You mean the guy we're _all_ after? Ask the former Nazi." She gestured toward Reach.

For her part, Cassie's eyes rolled. "You know, I used to tap dance too. No one ever brings **that** up. Hell, I also won the fifth _and _sixth grade spelling bees. No one says, 'hey, let's ask the really good speller over there'" Then she gestured toward an upside down dumpster in the corner of the lot. "I trapped Sparky under that and told them I wasn't letting him out until they took the darkness down."

Smiling faintly, I looked toward Tattletale. "So we've got the guy, and two of yours trapped. You've got one of ours."

If she was concerned, the blonde girl did a good job of hiding it. Her lips just curved into that knowing, confident smile as she shrugged. "What are you gonna do, arrest us? We're not the bad guys anymore, remember?"

"I'm pretty sure kidnapping is still a crime," I pointed out idly, watching as Freezetag continued to pull ineffectually at her trapped foot.

"Oh, but we weren't kidnapping him." Tattletale's reply came as she stretched lazily, unhurried. "We were just trying to talk to him. And in any case, you wouldn't report that anyway. Just like you're not going to report any of this."

"We're not?" I asked with a raised eyebrow, hoping she hadn't worked _everything_ out. Just how did Tattletale figure out the stuff she knew anyway? As far as I had been able to find, no one knew. Some people thought she was a minor clairvoyant, others thought her specialty lay in hacking, getting information out of computers to use later, while still others thought she was telepathic. That last one was impossible, of course. But how **did** her power work?

The other girl's head shook. "Nope. Because you're not here on an official case. You're not in costume, and the last thing you want is to have to tell the suits that consider themselves your superiors what you were doing out here. And you _**definitely**_ don't want them looking at Mr. Hase too closely." Her hand waved to indicate the man trapped beneath the overturned dumpster. "After all, that might lead to them finding out exactly what you're looking into, and why."

For a moment, I met Tattletale's gaze, trying to decide if even attempting to bluff was worth it. Finally, I sighed. "You let Kid go, we'll let your people go." I wasn't worried about Vacate taking off. We had the guy they were looking for.

"Do it, Tag." Grue said to the younger girl. His helmeted face hadn't looked away from where Reach and I were standing.

Grumbling, Freezetag reached out and slapped a hand none-too-gently against Chris's chest. Immediately, he jerked into motion, taking three steps back and raising his glue gun a little more.

"Let her go, Kid." I called. "We're working something out." Then I nodded to Reach. "Other guy too."

While my teammates released their prisoners, I continued to look at Tattletale and Grue. "How much do you know, and how did you find out?"

"That last part's a fascinating conversation just waiting to not happen right now." The blonde replied. "As to the first... we know enough. Maybe more than you. At least we knew our guy's name." Her smile broadened as I flinched. "Thought so."

Chris moved up to stand next to me, while Vacate and Freezetag joined their teammates. The latter flipped me off idly, before she nudged Grue. "C'mon, let's just smack these guys down, grab the guy, and get out of here. There's four of us and three of them." The look in her eyes behind the mask turned dark as she glared at Reach. "And one of them's a racist piece of shit no one'll miss."

"Down, Tag." Grue settled a hand on the girl's shoulder. "We're talking it out." I did notice, however, that he hadn't stopped staring in our direction, and his voice was gruff and hard. Belatedly, I realized that he hadn't been staring at both of us, but rather, he had been glaring at Reach this whole time.

"I gotta go with the kid there." Vacate remarked, looking out of place without any kind of costume. "Making deals with cunts like her ain't the best idea. She 'bout as trustworthy as a hungry snake in a roomful o'mice."

"More like rats," Cassie shot back from beside me. "Ugly, stupid rats."

"Man, I _**knew**_ you was still a racist fuck!" Vacate shouted, pointing at her.

"Who said anything about race?" Reach demanded. "I just think you're a drugged out fucking loser pervert. It's got nothing to do with your god damn skin color, jackass."

"Knock it off, both of you!" I held both hands up toward either of them. "Just stop. Ignore each other, got it? You don't have to get along, but just shut up for a minute." After a moment, I added, "Reach, can you let Mr. Hase out?"

For a second, Cassie just stood there, glowering at the Undersiders. Then she dismissively flicked her finger, flinging the dumpster up and off of the man.

He was on his feet a moment later, shaking loose trash off while stomping toward us. I gave him a once-over as he approached. The man wasn't very tall, maybe halfway between five and six feet, and he was a bit heavy-set, though not overly so. His hair had long since grayed, and he wore what remained from the sides and back pulled into a ponytail, while the top of his head was mostly bare.

"Look." He jabbed a stubby finger at us angrily. "Like I told Kaiser, _**I don't have any more of the professor's portal notes! **_So back the fuck off and leave me alone. I don't have what you want. Kaiser took all of it. Go bother his fucking people, got it?"

I stared, trying to figure out what the hell he was talking about. "The Professor?"

Tattletale made a soft noise of understanding. "Ah. You knew Professor Haywire."

I blinked that way. "The guy that made the connection between this place and Earth Aleph?" _The world that Marissa and Jess came from, _I thought to myself.

Hase looked back and forth between us, frowning. "That's what you're all coming after me for, isn't it? The Professor's notes. Like I told Kaiser the last time, the notes he took were all I had. Haywire was a friend, he sent me his notes and I was supposed to keep them safe. That's it. I don't know anything else, I don't have more of his notes stashed away, and I sure as hell don't understand any of them."

"Why would Kaiser want notes about Professor Haywire's work?" Grue asked, voice full of suspicion as he glanced toward Reach, clearly thinking she knew.

Hase sounded incredulous, "You don't know? Why the hell are you chasing me down then?"

Smiling, Tattletale waved a hand vaguely. "Why don't you just give us the rundown, Mr. Hase. Then we can leave you alone."

The man squinted back and forth between all of us, before heaving a long put-upon sigh. "Fine. Like I said, Kaiser wanted the Professor's notes. He had some idea that he could use the same idea to transport matter... _people... _back and forth. Something about being able to go anywhere in the world, even the most secure fucking places, by teleporting into the equivalent location in another world that didn't have that security, then teleporting back into the world you want to be in."

I stared at him, while Chris blurted, "That's insane. All Haywire did was let us transfer data back and forth."

Hase shrugged. "Hey, it wasn't my idea, okay? Kaiser said something about how he got the idea from his teacher or something, I don't know. Point is, he took the Professor's notes and that's the last I heard of it." He squinted at us. "That's it. That's all I know. Can I go now, or does someone else want to throw me around?"

I flinched and gestured. "You can go, sir. I—we're sorry. We just... needed to know what was going on."

The man didn't appear to be moved by my apology. He just rolled his eyes and turned to stomp off, muttering about how all he asked was to be left alone, and that if he'd known how much trouble the damn notes would be, he never would have agreed to take them.

After the man left, all of us, Wards and Undersiders alike, stared at each other as we tried to figure out what all of this meant. If Kaiser had thought that he could use Haywire's notes to make some kind of teleportation device that would let him infiltrate anywhere... that would include the Birdcage.

"Oh man." Chris had come to the same conclusion I had. "They built it. Someone built it."

"We need those notes," I said quietly. "We need to see what this thing is, how it works."

Cassie shrugged. "If Kaiser stole the notes, and if they're still around, they're probably in his office building somewhere. Probably in one of his hidden safes."

It was Grue who spoke then. "You mean the building that's currently full of those new PRT bodyguards or whatever? Fuck."

"Well." Tattletale was rubbing her hands together. She actually looked _excited_ by the prospect. "We're just going to have to work together to find those notes and get them out."

"Work together?" Cassie all but spat. "Fuck that."

Tattletale shrugged. "We can infiltrate the place, get past the codes and guards and whatever. But there's a whole lot of building to go over. Meanwhile, you guys have access, but there's no way you can search the place without people noticing. Plus, you've got her." She nodded toward Reach. "And she knows the building better than anyone else in there."

"Right." Chris agreed. "So why would we need you when we've got her?"

It was Grue that answered. "Because we can get past the new security, the stuff she _doesn't_ know about."

"Fact is," Tattletale pointed out with a smile. "We all need each other. We need to make a deal. Bitch doesn't belong in there anymore than the people you're rescuing, and you know it."

I took in a breath and then let it out. "It's more than just us. We're gonna have to talk to the others."

"Sure." The other girl produced a card from her belt, holding it out to me. "Call us at this number once you want to work together."

Barely had I taken the card, than the three Undersiders reached out to grab Vacate, who took the time to flip off Cassie. Then they were gone, leaving Reach, Kid Win, and I standing alone in the parking lot.

"Are we actually doing this?" Chris demanded. "Are we actually going to work with the Undersiders to break into the PCIPS building so we can steal the notes that supposedly let people teleport in and out of the god damn **Birdcage** willy nilly?"

My mouth opened and then shut before I shrugged helplessly. "I don't think we have a choice. We can't talk to anyone in charge, because they'll shut us down. They'd rather keep Miss Militia and my brother and anyone else locked up than admit there's a problem and cause a panic. So... yeah. Looks like we're working with the Undersiders."

**Interlude 11 – Trevor**

Why? Why did shit like this keep happening to him? What did he ever do to anybody?

Trevor Clements hadn't stopped asking himself those questions, and more, since the moment he had found himself inexplicably transported straight into the lowest pit of hell.

It wasn't fair. All he wanted to do was mind his business, go to college, and get the hell away from his parents and his spoiled little sister.  
>He had <strong>tried<strong> to move out, but things kept going against him. First his parents refused to pay for the first and last months rent for the sweet apartment that Wallace had found, claiming it was too much. They said he should get a job and save up.

But of course, _**Madison**_ got anything she wanted. Hell, if she'd asked for money for an apartment, they would've forked it right over. Madison could do no wrong. She was a perfect little angel.

It wasn't that he didn't care about his sister. Of course he did. But she had been a spoiled, selfish little brat for as long as he could remember, while their parents barely gave him the time of day.

He'd needed to get out, get away, be his own man. And he could have, if his parents had just fronted him a little bit of money to get on his feet. He could've afforded the actual rent once he was in the apartment, if they'd just cut him a little slack!

"Bet they're sorry now." Trevor muttered to himself, glaring at the floor in front of him as he lay on the cot in the dimly lit room. "If they even know where I am."

"You awake?" His now-perpetual companion stood at the doorway, her attention on the hall beyond.

Adjusting his position, Trevor took a brief moment to admire the view of the woman's backside. He'd seen it plenty of times before, of course. Miss Militia was totally the hottest member of the Protectorate in Brockton Bay, though Battery was pretty bangin' too. Hell, being able to be so near the hottie that was Miss Militia was probably the only _good_ part about any of this.

"I said, are you awake?" The woman repeated, turning her head slightly so that she could glance over her shoulder toward him without fully taking her eyes off of the corridor.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm awake." Heaving himself up, Trevor gave the shapely woman another admiring glance before focusing on the more immediate issue. "And I'm fucking hungry."

"We'll go for food now that you're up." The Protectorate heroine announced without looking at him. "Change your clothes, you'll upset the other prisoners if you go in wearing those ones. They stink."

Grumbling to himself about why he should care what upset the murdering freaks, Trevor stalked to the other side of the cell that they had commandeered. He snatched a pair of sweatpants and a tee-shirt from the pile and hurriedly changed, keeping an eye on the woman at the door just in case she tried to sneak a peak.

He really wished she would. Hell, when they'd first gotten trapped in here, once they realized there was no way out, he'd entertained... thoughts. They were dreams, really. Miss Militia would train him. He'd show her how much potential he had, how good he could be if someone would give him a chance. She'd be impressed, and then one thing would lead to another and...

"Are you ready?"

Her hard, demanding voice interrupted his daydream, and Trevor shook himself, sliding his feet into his worn sneakers before walking that way. "Yeah, whatever. Let's just get some food."

They walked, Trevor sticking close by his guardian angel's side. That was one thing he didn't have to be reminded of. The freaks in this place would tear him apart the second they had a chance. He was less than dust to them, a toy for them to pick apart at most.

Without Miss Militia, who, as far as he could tell, never slept, he would've been dead (or worse) a dozen times over before the first two days had been out. She was the only reason he was alive, of that he had no doubt.

It sucked. He hated feeling so fucking pathetic. Somehow, someway, he needed to **do** something. He had to find a way to take care of himself. Then, _**then**_ maybe Miss Militia would stop seeing him as some little puppy to take care of, and start seeing him the way he wanted her to see him.

"_So you have returned, Chameleon Knight."_ The voice that came was not a singular sound, but rather, some creepy chorus that sounded like a dozen people all talking together in sync.

Quickly turning his attention ahead of them, toward the sound, Trevor stopped walking. The figure who stood in their path _looked_ like a girl barely into her teens, covered by what had once been prison sweats, but were now more of a tattered shroud.

"We have no quarrel with you, Glastig Uaine." Miss Militia informed the creepy girl evenly. "We're just getting food."

"_Hush your restless faerie, Knight." _The crazy girl raised a hand slowly, indicating Trevor, while continuing to speak with that scary many-voices-at-once chorus. _"It is the boy that I will treat with now, if you desire entrance and nourishment." _

"Leave the boy alone, kind Faerie." Miss Militia spoke calmly, but firmly. Trevor had to do a double-take. Why the hell was she buying into this crazy bitch's faerie delusions? Seriously, that weapon she had could turn into anything she wanted it to. Why didn't she just blow this bitch's head off and let them move on? It wasn't like she didn't deserve it. She was in the _**Birdcage. **_Instead, the Protectorate woman simply continued, "He has nothing to do with this."

Glastig Uaine lowered her hand, responding quietly, _"Of that you are both right and wrong, Noble One. His presence disturbs the other sleepers. They believed his arrival to be a sign of their imminent release." _

"We're sorry to have disturbed you and your people." Miss Militia said with agonizing calmness. Didn't any of this shit bother her? "As I said before, none of that was our intention. If there's anything we can do to help restore order among your people..."

Trevor thought he saw the deceptively young-looking girl smile faintly. _"I ask only one thing. Before you may pass, I must speak to the boy. The fae must have words with him." _

When the woman remained hesitant, Trevor spoke up. "Sure, what do you w-want to talk about?" His voice cracked slightly at the end when the crazy girl had focused her gaze on him, but he got it out. He'd show Miss Militia that he wasn't useless, that he could help.

Sighing slightly, the Protectorate heroine stepped out of the way, giving the shrouded girl full access to him. "Just for a moment, please. The boy has been hungry for some time."

Glaistig Uaine seemed to all-but float across the floor toward Trevor, and then she stood directly in front of him. Her face was partially hidden by the rags that acted as a shroud, but he could see the curious smile as she spoke again. _"The Fae are gladdened by your presence, boy. You have met the True Healer." _

Trevor blinked a few times at that. "The... what? Wait, healer, you mean Panacea? I saw her from a distance once, but I didn't-"

The shroud moved as the girl shook her head. _"She is not the True Healer. True healing goes beyond the body. Self is unimportant to the Fae. They exist beyond, where only the True Healer may reach." _

"I... Uhhh..." He was at a loss. "Sorry, I don't know who you're talking about then. Panacea's the best healer in the world. If you're looking for someone even better at healing than her..." He trailed off, shrugging helplessly. 

In response, Glaistig Uaine lifted her hand, holding what turned out to be very well drawn picture in front of his face. Immediately recognizing the figure in the drawing, yet still confused, Trevor blinked. "Tether? That new Ward girl? I think you're a little confused. She doesn't heal people."

That same ghostly smile returned. _"There is more than one type of healing, boy. Only one may fix what has been broken since before the Fae began their slumber. You have met her, and the Fae are stirred to happiness. They may exist without being shattered and scattered, without being broken." _

"Uhhhh..." Trevor worked his mouth. He had no idea what this crazy chick was rambling about. He'd never met Tether. Not that he would've objected to it. She wasn't Miss Militia, of course, but she was still definitely cute. "All right then, whatever you say. Glad to uhh, help? Or... whatever."

The crazy girl was already ignoring him again. Her attention had returned to Miss Militia. _"You and your charge will be safe here, Chameleon Knight. The Fae will watch over the boy and his guardian until the True Healer arrives." _

Frowning uncertainly, the Protectorate woman finally nodded. "Thank you, noble one. May we pass, now?"

When Glastig simply curtsied and stepped aside, Trevor started to walk again. He waited until they were through the door and approaching the table laden with food before he twirled a finger next to his ear, making soft cuckoo noises.

A hand shook Trevor's shoulder, dragging him out of what had been a very pleasant dream, and back to the stupid reality of his utterly unfair situation.

He opened his eyes, expecting to see his constant companion. Instead, the boy found himself staring up at an unfamiliar face that was much less pleasant to look at. He jolted a bit, opening his mouth to cry out, but the mundane looking man simply covered his mouth with a hand.

"Shhh." He cautioned, head shaking. "I'm not here to hurt you. My people are distracting your little bodyguard, but she'll be back shortly."

When the man lowered his hand, Trevor stared at him. "Who are you? What the hell do you want? What are you doing here?" Now that he had a second to examine the intruder, he couldn't see how the guy could be a threat. He looked like a fat, middle-aged, balding man.

"My people call me Teacher," the man replied softly. He held up a bar of chocolate in his other hand. "And I've come to make you an offer, Trevor."

Gazing hungrily at the chocolate, Trevor hesitated for just a second before snatching it. Unwrapping the candy quickly, he asked, "What kind of offer, huh? Everyone else in this place is batshit, so what's your deal? You think you're Lucifer or something? You wanna make me a deal in exchange for my soul or some shit?"

The ugly man just chuckled softly. "Hardly. No, my boy, I provide a service... in exchange for a service."

Eating half the chocolate in a single bite, Trevor almost moaned out loud at the taste. Jesus, how long had it been since he'd had _**chocolate?**_ Mouth still full, he mumbled, "What kinda service?"

"You see," the man explained. "My power is only truly helpful to others. I am able to grant certain... mental abilities to other people."

Blinking up at that, Trevor frowned, swallowing the chocolate. "What's that supposed to mean? You 'grant mental abilities'? You mean you make people smarter or something?"

Again, the man just chuckled. "I mean, Trevor, that I am able to create tinkers and thinkers out of ordinary, mundane, _powerless_ people."

It took a moment for that to sink in fully, but once it did, Trevor's eyes widened. "Wait, are you saying you turn people into capes? Why the hell would they put you in here if you had a power that fucking useful?"

"Jealousy." Teacher replied, waving a hand dismissively. "But their loss is your gain, Trevor. After all, being an ordinary person in this place is... very dangerous."

"I noticed." Trevor grumbled. "But Miss Militia-"

"Oh, yes, my mistake." Teacher raised a hand acceptingly. "Of course you wouldn't be bothered by letting a woman protect you."

Squinting at that, Trevor's head shook. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Shh." Teacher rose as though to leave. "Think nothing of it. I'm glad that you're comfortable here. Being protected is nothing to be ashamed of."

"Of course I'm not fucking ashamed." Trevor spat, angry now. "She's a god damn superhero. I'm just... I'm just..." He trailed off, his anger turning into doubt and uncertainty.

"Normal?" Teacher supplied, raising an eyebrow. Then, after a momentary pause, he added, "You don't have to be."

"What's the catch?" Trevor demanded then, sliding off his cot and standing with his arms folded. "What's the catch if I accept this 'offer' of yours?"

"I can swear to you," Teacher responded easily. "That the only catch to my gift, is that once it is given, you must follow my instructions."

Sure. He'd follow the guy's instructions, right up until he had what he wanted. Then Trevor was out of there. Fuck, with a thinker or tinker ability, he could actually _**help**_ Miss Militia somehow. Maybe even find a way out of here, or figure a way to keep them safe so she could take a break.

She'd be happy then. She'd see he wasn't useless, wasn't just a pathetic little boy for her to protect. She'd be impressed by his ingenuity, his new power. Maybe she'd even...

"Fine," Trevor said, coughing to focus on the here and now. His daydreams could wait... for when they weren't dreams anymore. "Whatever you say, Teach."

He extended his hand to the man. "Do your thing."


	12. Arc 12: Mission

_**Notes: **_ Starfox – Glad you like the bonding between Madison and her new guardians. That's... important this update. ;) And Tattletale appears again as well, so hopefully you'll enjoy it. (But yes, Trevor is... not the brightest)

Imageination – Trevor is TOTALLY in over his head, and he's not exactly dealing with it in the best way. As for the latter, if it helps, Pandora does appear in this update, to hopefully make up for not appearing in the last one. :)

**12.01**

"I shouldn't be doing this," I announced as I stood, staring at the rows of shops that lay stretched out before me. It was the day after the incident with the Undersiders and Mr. Hase, and I had returned to the same mall.

Beside me, Jess looked up from her wheelchair. "Hey, I said you were probably more likely to find what you want in one of those little shops downtown, but you suggested the mall."

My head shook. "Not that. I mean any of this. Trevor's in..." I trailed off and lowered my voice. "Trevor's in the Birdcage, Jess. And what am I doing? I'm... I'm... goofing off."

The other girl swatted my arm. "Don't be stupid. You're not goofing off. You're getting a present for your... your girlfriend, and then going on a date, a real date. Your girlfriend who happens to be one of my best friends, so there."

I sighed a little. "But Trevor-"

"Will survive another day," she said firmly. "Look, you said that Tattletale and Reach are going over the details of the break-in, right?"

"Yeah..." I said slowly.

"And that the earliest they could possibly get in there would be tomorrow, right?" She prompted.

My head nodded as I bit my lip. "Yeah, true, but still-"

"But nothing." Jess looked at me seriously. "Honestly, Madison, it's all right. Your brother has Miss Militia with him. I'm not going to lie and say he's safe, but can you do anything _**right now**_ to make him safer?"

Opening my mouth to respond, I hesitated. "I... I could... say something..."

"To who?" The other girl shook her head. "You could start a panic by saying that your brother is trapped in there with one of the Protectorate heroes, but what would that accomplish, other than letting you feel for just a minute or two like you're actually doing something?"

I flinched, but she wasn't wrong. Blunt, but not wrong. "If anything happens to him while I'm... stuck..."

"Don't punish yourself before you even know anything about how he's doing." Jess scolded. "The last you knew, Miss Militia was keeping him safe. Let's just... assume that's continuing for now. What else can you do to help, that you haven't already done?"

Sighing, I waved a hand. "Nothing. I know. This still feels kind of wrong. He's suffering in there, and I want to spend the night being... happy."

Rather than respond to that, Jess poked my side with her hand. "Incoming."

Looking up and over to where she had indicated, I saw Dennis approach. The red-head's thin lips were stretched into an infectious smile. "Well, hey there, Mads. Who's your friend?"

I opened my mouth to point out that they knew each other already, but caught myself. "I—uhhh... this is... ummm..." Crap, I was drawing a blank. They both knew each other, but not like this.

Openly smirking now, Dennis focused on Jess. "Okay, judging by poor Maddy's deer in headlights impression, you would obviously be Jess, from the other night."

"And you would be Mr. Time," Jess guessed. "Considering you're a guy, and your hair isn't brown."

"Nah," Dennis replied dryly. "I'm Reach. Do I have a great disguise or what?"

I threw my hands up then. "Do secret identities just mean nothing to you two?"

Dennis raised an eyebrow at that. "Hey, it's your fault. Who do you hang out with that's _not_ a part of all this?"

My mouth opened as I raised a finger to point at him. "That... that..." Sighing, I lowered it and sulked. "I hate you."

Laughing, Dennis put an arm around me to pull me into a hug. "No, you don't. Besides, I figured it out before I even came over here. Girl in a wheelchair makes projections of monsters. Just makes sense."

"Only in our world." I muttered, returning the hug briefly. "What's that for?"

Releasing me, Dennis shrugged. "I figure you've gotta feel pretty bad about Trevor being stuck where he is. Just want you to know it's not your fault. Cassie and you-know-who are are still going over the floorplan."

"Will they be ready for tomorrow?" Jess asked.

He nodded at that. "They say they will, so... hopefully? I'm still not sure about working with bad guys, Mads."

"They're not bad anymore, remember?" I pointed out. "They're free and clear."

His eyes rolled. "Yeah, because _**that**_ doesn't stink of corruption. If they didn't bribe, bully, or blackmail their way into those pardons, I will eat my hat."

"Do you even have a hat?" I had to ask.

"I will buy a hat and then eat it." Dennis amended. "Anyway, what are you guys doing here? Getting me an early birthday present?" His eyebrows waggled at the suggestion.

"Well, clearly she knows what you need now." Jess smiled faintly. "A hat."

Snorting, I explained, "Actually, we're here to find a present for Marissa."

"What's the occasion?" He asked, looking between us.

I smiled ruefully. "The occasion of, 'I really do like being able to call myself your girlfriend, even if our lives are really fucked up right now.'"

"Aha." My friend nodded sagely. "A very important occasion indeed." Considering for a moment, he finally grinned once more. "I've got a few ideas you might want to check out. If you two don't mind company."

I looked at Jess, who shrugged and replied, "I'm just here to let her know if she's buying anything that Mars won't like."

"Perfect." Dennis gave us a thumbs up. "Let's go shopping." Pausing after that announcement, he looked at his thumb and then lowered it with a mournful sigh. "I have **got** to start hanging out with more dudes."

Any doubts that I'd still had about the evening were mostly erased at the sight of Marissa's beautiful smile when she opened the little jewelry box that held her present. We were standing in the kitchen of my parents' home, getting ready to go out for the evening when I'd given her the gift that Dennis and Jess had helped me pick out earlier. Jess herself had made herself scarce for a few hours, saying she had other things to do.

Marissa's surprised gasp when she saw the contents of the box made me tingle. "Ohhh... Mads, they're... they're beautiful."

Flushing, both from pride and from the feelings that her smile was giving me, I explained. "They're Mars earrings. See, the stone inside is all red and orange and firey, like the surface of Mars. Or like your suns. I... I know they're not much, but... you really like them?" I asked, hopefully.

Marissa tenderly ran her finger over the pretty red stone of the stud earrings. "I love them, Maddy." Holding the box in one hand, she used the other arm to pull me close, kissing the top of my head, then my cheek before whispering, "You didn't have to get me anything."

I shrugged, self-consciously. "I just wanted you to know that... that I like you, and I... I appreciate you."

Her finger tilted my chin up, and then she was kissing me with a kind of intense hunger that took my breath away. My knees tried to give out, and I had to reach up quickly to catch onto her arm before I lost my balance.

When Mars finally pulled back from the kiss, I whimpered a little bit, eyes fluttering open. "O-oh... I... Ummm... uhhh...W... wow." My thoughts were drifting away like dandelion seeds on the wind, and for a moment, all I could do was stand there and smile goofily, repeating, "Wow."

Looking proud of herself, Marissa straightened. "Thank you, Mads. Seriously. You didn't have to get me anything. I mean that. I just like... being with you."

"And I like being with you." I assured her, taking Marissa's free hand and squeezing it. "I just... wanted you to know that... even though our lives are really messed up, and... and weird, and... crazy... that... I like you. I like spending time with you, whenever we get a chance."

For a moment, the two of us just stood there and smiled dumbly at each other. Marissa recovered first, shaking herself. "Speaking of spending time, are you going to tell me what we're doing yet?"

"Weeelll," I drew out the word, smiling. "Since I'm free all evening, I thought we'd start with dinner and then go see... a play."

"Wow." Mars blinked as she digested that. "A play, huh? Big stuff for a first real date."

Blushing, I shrugged. "It's just a production that the university's putting on. It's really not a big deal."

Shaking her head as she brought my hand up to gently kiss my fingers, Marissa spoke quietly. "You're wrong, Maddy. It is a really big deal. Thank you."

We walked out of the house together, hand in hand, heading for the simple sedan that Mars was using ever since she'd lost access to the other car she'd had. It didn't look nearly as cool, but it did blend better.

Unfortunately, we'd barely _reached_ the car before the phone in my pocket started to buzz insistently. Stopping short, I blinked down at it and then closed my eyes, groaning. "Just have a question, just have a question, please just have a question." Wincing, I slipped the phone out of my pocket and looked at it, sighing at the number before answering, "Please tell me you just have a question."

"Sorry." Dennis, who was on console duty that evening, sounded truly regretful. "I know. I know we're interrupting, but something's up."

Flinching as I looked at Marissa, who had actually taken the time to get dressed up for this, I let out a sigh. "What is it? And are you sure Kid and Glory Girl can't handle it?" They were the two scheduled for patrol.

"Not unless you want to make them fight two against five," Dennis replied. "That Duelitist guy showed up, and he's got friends this time. Glory's tanking them while Kid keeps them pinned with potshots as much as possible, but they need help. Reach and Vista are already on the way, but since we don't know what exactly this new group is capable of..."

I shook my head quickly. "No, no, of course not. I'll be there. Err, where are they?"

"Benny's Electronics," he answered. "Apparently they just got some big shipment in yesterday. Duelitist and his group had a truck backed up to the doors and everything."

"That's... five minutes away the way I travel. I'll be there in seven." I promised, before disconnecting. Then, flinching, I turned to face my girlfriend. "Mars... I-"

She stopped me with a finger against my lips. I could see the disappointment, but also acceptance. "I know. It's okay, Mads. I get it. Besides, you know you're not dating a civilian, right? Why don't we go together?"

My mouth opened and then shut. "You want to go with? I mean, in costume and everything?"

"Sure." Marissa shrugged, already pulling me back toward the front door. "I do have powers too, you know. And if I'm going to convince people I'm not a bad guy anymore... well, then I should start doing good guy things." After a second, she added, "Besides, there's no way I'm letting you be the only one that gets to hurt these guys for interrupting our date."

I grinned, starting to sprint toward the door rather than leave Victoria and Chris waiting any longer when they needed help. "You know we'll have to travel my way to get there in time."

"Eh," Marissa replied. "How bad could it be?"

A scream pierced the air just before the line that I had attached to Sundancer deposited the girl onto the broken cement behind the overturned van that Kid Win was using for cover. I landed just beside her, while Kid glanced up from where he had been taking a few shots around the corner of the vehicle and toward the store, where the doors had been completely caved in.

When he saw us together, Chris took the time to tease, "Aww man, is it Bring Your Date To The Crime Scene Day already? I thought that was next week."

"You can't see it," I informed him. "But I'm sticking my tongue out at you. Just fyi." I took a peek around the other side of the van, seeing Glory Girl fly down out of the air, straight toward a white guy in his twenties, whose right leg was clearly a prosthetic. Just before Victoria would have hit him, the guy raised his hand, manifesting a glowing blue forcefield that her fist did nothing to. "And f-my-i, what're we dealing with?"

"Well at least we know what they call themselves." Chris gestured toward a bit of graffiti spray-painted onto the nearby wall.

"Outliars?" I raised an eyebrow at that. "Did they misspell it, or is that supposed to be clever?"

Kid's response was a shrug before he pointed off to where I could barely make out a couple of figures in the far corner of the lot. "Vista's over there, keeping their superspeed guy occupied. Calls himself Pursuit. The guy Glory Girl's tangling with said his name's... what was it... Right, Bulwark. Forcefields, apparently. Reach is-" A terrifying crash came from inside the building, and he winced. "Reach is inside, dealing with Duelitist and some woman that calls herself Scintillant. Best we can tell, she can take any source of light and reshape it. Lasers, weapons, random animals, she turned the glow from that traffic light over there into an elephant. That's what took out the doors."

"That's..." I counted briefly. "four. Clockblocker mentioned five."

As if on cue, a tiny figure abruptly came charging around the side of the van, knife held high. Without flinching, Kid Win let the right barrel of his jetpack point down, blowing the figure in half with a laser.

It was a puppet, a marionette. The broken figure had barely hit the ground before the top half started to try to crawl toward us once more, but Chris shot it again, blowing it into wood splinters.

"That would be my playmate." He jerked a thumb back toward the doors. "Some guy just inside there. He's got a dozen of these damn things, all moving around and shit. Calls himself Geppetto."

"Geppetto?" Marissa put in. "Seriously? Man, first they ruin our date, then they fuck up one of my favorite movies for me."

"Guess we've gotta make 'em pay for it," I said, before adding, "Think you can help Kid clear out the mad puppets while I give Reach a hand inside?"

"You got it." She gave me a thumbs up, before looking at Chris. "Assuming you don't mind the company?"

"Pfft." He shook his head and leaned around the corner to fire another shot. "Please, feel free. I've had all the murderous evil puppets I can handle. I don't even _like_ those movies."

Leaving those two to deal with Geppetto, I used a line to launch myself upward and toward one of the windows, while muttering to myself. "Okay guys, you really, really picked the wrong night to start shit."

On the plus side, at least I no longer had to feel guilty about going on a date while Trevor was still trapped.

**12.02**

As I came through the shattered window, avoiding the doorway where Geppetto was, I brought myself down on top of one of the checkout counters. After landing, I took in the scene within the store, adjusting to the large room that was only dimly illuminated by less than half of the available lights.

The center of the sales floor had been cleared entirely, the shelves and rows of merchandise having been flung to the sides in order to make a wide circular area. A tall, black woman with her hair cut into cornrows, wearing what looked like bronze and red colored SWAT-style armor with flashlights mounted onto the shoulders and the arms, stood in the middle of the open area. I could also see a dark metallic mask over her face that covered her eyes, forehead, and nose before splitting around her mouth and chin to leave those exposed, carrying on down across her cheeks on either side.

While I was orienting myself, the woman (Scintillant, apparently) did something with her hand. The flashlight on her left shoulder flared up, brightening the somewhat dim area around her. Almost as soon as the flashlight turned on, it went off again. But the beam of light remained, splitting into what looked like three miniature boomerang shapes that went spinning off across the room and toward where I could make out two figures near the customer service/returns area in the back of the store. Before the solid-light boomerangs could hit the smaller figure, she flicked a hand up and one of the nearby shelving units flew up into the air to intercept them. The boomerangs melted the shelf into a twisted, burned piece of junk, before it flew straight toward the other figure, who had been coming forward with a sword raised. The weapon cleaved through the flung shelf, scattering the remains.

Before the two criminals could continue to gang up on my teammate, I activated my com to warn her. "Coming in to join your party, Reach. Got the light chick." Then I brought up a pair of lines, attaching them to the flashlights on either of Scintillant's shoulders before giving a sharp yank. Both lights were torn free of their housing, and were sent clattering along the floor.

The force also yanked the other woman backwards, but she caught herself before she could fall. Spinning toward where the flashlights had gone, she activated the one on her right arm, sending a beam of light out that transformed into a bird-figure, sweeping through the air as she searched for where the attack had come from.

That was my cue. Yanking myself to the floor behind the woman, I lamented aloud. "Ohhh I'm sorry. Were those yours?" As she spun to face me, I adopted a scolding posture, wagging my finger. "I have got to learn to stop stealing other people's things" With my head cocked curiously to the side, I asked, as though it had just occurred to me. "Maybe I should talk to someone about it. I don't suppose you've got some kind of Pathetic Thieves Anonymous number I could call?"

Scintillant made some kind of growling sound of annoyance, lifting both of her arms with the mounted flashlights pointed at me. "I'm gonna enjoy making you shut the fuck up."

While she spoke, I attached lines between the metal balls on my shoulders and the bulbs of each flashlight. The lights had barely flicked on before I sent the balls crashing into them, blowing out the bulbs and destroying each flashlight.

"Really?!" I made myself sound excited. "Well that's good to hear. Most people get all upset when they're trying to shut me up. Good to hear you're enjoying the endeavor."

In response, Scintillant lifted her arm. I saw a tiny penlight under her wrist come to life. Its weak beam apparently wasn't enough for her to do a lot with, but she did manage to shape it into a blade as she came for me.

I started to attach new lines, but before I could, the woman dropped out of my sightline, disrupting the line-forming process. The next thing I knew, my legs were being kicked out from under me, and I landed hard on my back. A second later, Scintillant was on her knees next to me, bringing her arm down. It was all I could do to twist aside before that little light-blade of hers seared through the floor where my shoulder had been.

"Fucking cunt." She cursed, dragging the blade across the floor toward me. I raised an arm to block her elbow, then lashed out with my other hand to punch her in the face, nailing her with the gauntlet and sending her head reeling backwards.

I tried to follow up with a second punch to get her away from me, but she caught my arm and I found myself yanked up and over, face pressed to the floor as she put a knee in my back. "Can't move what you can't see, can ya, bitch?" She asked while keeping my face firmly away from her.

"You'd think so, huh?" I asked, just to confuse matters. Then I attached a pair of lines between the front of my costume and the floor beneath it, both of which I could feel just fine. I used the lines to launch myself upward, knocking Scintillant off me in the process.

Flying up about a dozen feet, I oriented myself back toward the floor. My opponent spun to intercept me with that blade of hers, but I quickly attached a line between a nearby cash register and the woman's costume, using it to send the register flinging toward her with enough force to knock her out of my way. She managed to use her pen-light blade to cut the thing, but it at least made her stumble backwards and gave me room to land.

Right as I landed, Scintillant recovered. She came at me with her foot raised to kick at my side, but I hurriedly tethered her ankle to the ground, yanking her off balance so that she was forced to stumble right into the gauntlet-covered fist that I put into her stomach, doubling the taller woman over with an explosive gasp as the air ran out of her. Finally, before she could recover, I attached two lines from the back of her neck and the seat of her pants up to the ceiling, and had them yank her up a short distance before releasing her so that she fell heavily onto her stomach.

I had the ziptie cuffs out in one hand when the woman rolled over. She was staring past me, up at the... Realizing where she was looking, I flung myself sideways, using a line to propel me faster. Landing hard on my side, I saw three different light-arrows that she had called down from one of the ceiling lamps hit the floor where I had been.

I rolled back to my feet in time to see the woman's back for half a second as she disappeared through the manager's office door after leaping over the checkout counters. Cursing under my breath, I held a hand out and put a line against the wall next to the office, using it to yank myself there. My foot hit the door and kicked it open, and I entered just in time to see a flash of the woman disappearing out the window, too short to get any kind of line attached.

I'd barely started toward the window before it, and some of the wall around it, were broken through by a grasping hand made of light that was big enough to thumb wrestle King Kong, probably crafted from one of the nearby streetlamps. I managed to drop flat onto the floor with a yelp just in time before the groping fingers broke through the wall behind me, shattering a display case of trophies and sending plaster dust raining down on me.

Either she was unable to sustain something that size for long or she was focused on leaving, because the hand vanished a second later.

Reach came through the door while I was lying on my back, recovering. Several parts of her costume had been cut, and I could see blood dripping from between her fingers as she held her hand tightly over her other arm. "You know we're not supposed to take naps on the job, right?" She asked, quirking an eyebrow at me. I couldn't see the lower part of her face through the half-mask, but I knew the girl was smirking.

"Oh, well, now you tell me." I managed before heaving myself back to my feet. I looked around, surveying the destruction of the manager's office before glancing back to her. "Mine got away. What about yours?"

In response, she cursed under her breath. "Gone. Threw some kind of fucking dust in my face, then did this shit with his sword." She nodded down at the cut on her arm. "By the time I could breathe again, he was out of there."

"Shit." I sighed before shaking my head as I picked my way through the debris-laden office. "Let's go see how the others are doing, and get you a bandage or something."

As we started back toward the doors, Reach glanced to me. "So, how's the date going?"

Glancing around the all-but-destroyed store, the shelves that had been hurled back into random heaps or just plain melted into scrap, the piles of broken electronics, the shattered front doors, the demolished manager's office behind us, I finally shrugged. "About the same as always."

As it turned out, we'd only managed to get two of the five. Sundancer and Kid Win had taken out all of Geppetto's little friends (and done a bit of damage to the parking lot with Marissa's mini-sun), but the cape himself had disappeared.

Thankfully, Glory Girl had figured out how to trap her guy by pretty much copying Reach's trick. She had picked up a nearby dumpster and brought it down on top of the man to trap him inside, letting him make all the forcefields he wanted while she held it in place. As it turned out, the guy's forcefields were unable to move or grow once he made them and they couldn't intersect space taken up by anything else, so he was unable to use them to push the dumpster off himself.

Vista too had fared better than we had. She'd easily exhausted her opponent by making him run in circles, trapping Pursuit in a twisting labyrinth of space that he couldn't find a way out of until Vista finally took pity on the guy and accepted his surrender.

"But see, I thought the kid couldn't affect space that other people were moving through," Marissa remarked as the two of us walked along the quiet, dark street on the way back to Ethan and Sam's house. By the time I'd finished being debriefed by Photon Mom and changed clothes, the play had been half-over. We'd scrapped the idea of going to it, and spent the time we had left getting burgers and milkshakes at a nearby diner.

I grinned around the straw of my strawberry shake. "She didn't. Apparently she set the whole maze up before she even got his attention. Then she just goaded him until he tried to get at her."

Chuckling, Mars shook her head. "Tell Win I'm sorry I wasn't more use."

"Hey, you took out all those little puppets," I pointed out.

She snorted disparagingly. "Sure, and there's no way he can ever replace a bunch of wooden toys. Geppetto himself got away."

"So did Scintillant." I reached out with my free hand to take hers, interlocking our fingers as we walked together down the sidewalk. "And Reach lost Duelitist too. We were two for five. Not exactly a stellar record."

"Still," Mars shrugged one shoulder while squeezing my hand. "I've been getting _better_ with my sun, but not enough to risk sending it indoors."

"Yeah, I meant to say something about that." I glanced sidelong at the other girl. "Have you been practicing? Because, well, for summoning a miniature sun and sending it flying back and forth to chase down two foot tall puppets, that parking lot wasn't nearly _**as**_ damaged as I'd expected."

Marissa blushed a little at that. "A little bit. I don't know, it just feels... ummm... I guess it feels a little bit more... in sync? I mean, I'm still scared of it, but for the last... I don't know, since Leviathan, I've felt more... aligned with it. It's like... it's like learning how to whistle."

I blinked at that. "Learning how to whistle?"

She nodded. "Yeah, see, when I was a kid, I tried to learn how to whistle. My mom wanted me to do it for some talent show. But no matter what I did, no matter how she or anyone else tried to explain it, I couldn't do it. I just **could not whistle **for the life of me. Mom was _so_ pissed off at me. She thought I was goofing off. I wasn't, I just couldn't get it. Then one day, it just clicked. I don't know what did it, but I could whistle. And I've been able to whistle ever since."

"So you had your whistling moment with your power?" I asked, curiously.

"Not that dramatic," she replied with a shrug. "I'm still not really... confident. But I've been trying, ever since I took that damn formula, to figure out a way to limit the damage it does. I've been fighting against it the whole time. I hated it."

"You were working against your power instead of with it," I offered after a moment.

Mars nodded. "I guess I was. I just wanted it to stop hurting people. I was so terrified that it was going to kill someone, that _**I**_was going to kill someone."

"So what happened with Leviathan?"

We walked in silence for a few moments before Marissa replied, "I guess it was the first time that I _really _let loose, the first time that I was actually trying to do as much damage as I possibly could. And when I did, it felt like I was... like I was twisting the knobs on an old stove to turn the burner up as high as it would go. I was pouring on the gas, forcing it to get bigger and to spread that heat out as far as I could make it go. I wanted to kill the damn thing. Didn't work, but... after that, I realized that if I could twist those mental knobs and make the heat go up..."

"You could twist them the other way," I finished. "And make the heat go down."

Marissa nodded. "Exactly. So, I've been practicing with that a little bit. It's not perfect, but I've basically figured out how to draw in the heat that my suns give off to within a foot or so of space around them."

I whistled at that. "See, you're getting there. Ready to join the Protectorate yet?"

Her eyes rolled. "Doubtful. I'm pretty sure they'd still rather have someone who actually has a stun setting, not just a _smaller _lethal setting."

"Hey, I think you're **very** stunning." I grinned and poked her with the hand that held my milkshake.

Giggling, clearly in spite of herself, Marissa shook her head. "That was terrible. Cute, but terrible." We had stopped walking, and she gestured to the nearby street sign. "This is the street you said to drop you off in front of."

I hadn't wanted to walk with Mars all the way to Ethan and Sam's house. They were cool, and I totally trusted Marissa, but it still felt like it would have been a breach of trust to let her know _exactly_ where they lived. "Yup. Here we are."

My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I freed my hand from hers to look down at the screen. "It's from Tattletale. We're on for tomorrow night."

"You gonna be ready for it?"

"Ready to break into Peesips headquarters and find out if the plans to build something that might let us teleport into the single most secure prison in the world are there, so we can rescue my brother and everyone else that doesn't belong there?" I asked before shrugging. "Sure, why not. I'm not doing anything else then."

"Peesips." Mars shook her head ruefully. "They really should've come up with a better acronym than P-C-I-P-S."

I snickered in spite of myself. "Yeah, I think they're kicking themselves now."

She kissed me then, gently. "Whatever happens tomorrow, I'll be there with you."

Smiling faintly, I shivered a little. "Thank you, Mars. I... thanks."

Backing away, Marissa shrugged while teasing, "Hey, I've gotta keep an eye on you. After all, you still owe me a real date."

I watched until she'd walked out of sight around the corner. Then I stuck my hands in my pockets and started for home.

My key was barely in my hand to let myself in once I arrived at the house before the door swung open. Ethan was there, looking more upset than I'd ever seen him.

"She's gone." He announced, his voice sounding strained.

"Huh?" I stared up at him, eyes wide. "What—Sam?"

"She's gone. She disappeared." Ethan looked down at me, his mounting frustration and tension obvious. "She was sorting through the mail. She said something about someone sending you... crystals or something. Then I heard this loud pop and... when I came into the hall, she was gone."

My mouth opened and shut, as the mounting realization came over me. "They tried to get me again." I said aloud, my voice small and weak against the thought of what had happened. "Whoever's doing this, they tried to get me like they got Trevor... and... and..."

"And they got Puppy instead." Ethan's voice was a growl, all humor gone from it. Now all I could hear in his words was the unspoken promise of pain to the person who had stolen his wife. "They took her... to the _**god... damn... Birdcage." **_

**12.03**

"So what did he say?" I asked Ethan a couple of hours later, as the two of us stood just outside of Armsmaster's office and workshop. I had been waiting in the hallway for the two men to get done talking.

Ethan, looking understandably agitated, kept walking past me. "Talk about it after we're out of here. I don't really feel like standing in here." He made a point of looking straight up at a camera in the corner. "Too many people paying attention to things that are none of their business."

I followed along, and Ethan didn't say anything else the whole time we were on the private ferry that led from the floating Protectorate base to the mainland. He didn't actually speak again until we had reached his truck and were pulling out of the lot. Then, he finally looked at me. "I just had to sit in there and pretend I had no idea where Sam was. I had to lie and act clueless while Colin promised he'd ask Dragon to go over the footage of all the mail you got, and who sorted it until they find out who managed to get the teleport device or whatever it was past the screening process. My wife is in danger, I know _**exactly**_ where she is, but I couldn't tell him because there's nothing he could do about it anyway."

I was quiet for a moment before saying, "Maybe we should have told him. You could have had me come in with you. I would've told Armsmaster what I knew. We could both have told him about Professor Haywire's notes." I had already told both Ethan and Sam about what we had learned from Mr. Hase. Battery had said that she had someone else that she wanted to talk to about that, but I hadn't heard anything else before now, when it was too late. I didn't even know who she'd wanted to talk to.

Ethan's hands were tight on the steering wheel as he shook his head, and I saw him brush his thumb over a rubber band that had been wound around the gearshift. "No. Colin's a decent guy, and a good person to have in your corner. But if we put this in his hands, he's going to want to be all official about it. And if he hears that Dragon and Costa-Brown are behind it staying hush hush, let alone that your info comes from the Alcott girl and Pandora, he'll clamp down on anything we could actually do. Not just to be an ass, he'll think it's the right thing to do. Like I said, he's a good guy, but he's a company man. He'll toe the line, and he definitely won't take risks like going behind Costa-Brown's back. Too rigid and stuck in his ways, the Protectorate's ways."

"So, what are we gonna do?" My voice was quiet as I looked at the man, knowing just how much he was hurting, how angry he was.

"You've got something going on, don't you? You told us some of it, the facts, but you've got more planned."

His wife was missing. I wasn't going to pretend that I didn't know what he was talking about, or make him explain further. "Something to rescue the people like my brother... and now Sam? Yes, we... we've been working on something."

"The responsible adult part of me is supposed to tell you to leave it alone, and just give everything you know to the adults that are supposed to take care of situations like this."

"And the rest of you?"

Ethan took in a long breath before letting it out. "Tell me what you've got planned, how you were planning on dealing with this before Sammy disappeared."

I proceeded to do just that. I told him that we planned on breaking into the PCIPS building with the help of the Undersiders to try to either find the lost plans, or find out if they'd been taken and by who.

When I finished talking, Ethan nodded slowly. "Sounds to me like what you might end up needing is a distraction to keep people busy and eyes off their security screens."

Blinking, I pointed out mildly, "You know, I'm pretty sure that they'll notice if you or your previous alter-ego start attracting attention. I mean, I get needing to help, but Assault or Madcap making waves is going to cause more problems than it solves. And for the record, I wouldn't really feel like explaining to Sam _**when**_ we get her out why you're going the other direction on your way inside, for good."

"Hey," Ethan glanced toward me. "I can be subtle when I need to. When I've got a good reason to be."

"What do you have in mind that's going to get enough attention, but not be linked to you?"

For the first time since I'd found out about Battery, he smiled. "Just trust me. I'll take care of it."

"So tell me again why you guys get to go in and we're stuck sitting out here babysitting the Junior Villain." Victoria demanded the next night, as both our team and the four Undersiders stood in the park across the street from what had been the building belonging to MedHall, Kaiser's civilian identity's pharmaceutical company, and was now the headquarters for PCIPS.

"Hey!" Both Grue and Freezetag objected. The former went on to say, "We were cleared of all crimes."

Meanwhile, the girl continued with, "Who you calling Junior?"

Roughly half of us, those going inside the building, weren't in our normal costumes. Instead, we wore simple black infiltration suits and masks that Tattletale had procured from somewhere. They came with night-vision lenses that I was already planning on asking to have incorporated into my actual mask.

Sighing, Victoria looked at me pleadingly. "Don't make me sit out here with her. I'm gonna kill her."

Freezetag muttered, "Not if I put you in time-out and go get a burrito, you're not."

I shook my head at the blonde girl's renewed pleading. "Sorry, Glory, you know how it goes. It's gonna be hard enough to get through this place without having **everybody** coming along with us. You, Clockblocker, Freezetag, and Kid Win have to stay out here to play backup just in case."

Victoria turned her attention to Dennis, who shrugged. "Sorry, I may be the leader on paper, but this isn't a Wards mission. Her brother and her guardian are the ones that are missing. It's her call." That said, he still looked at me with what I was sure was a frown behind his mask. "But I'm still not sure about the choices of who you're taking inside."

"Like I said before," I adjusted the fit of my unfamiliar mask while explaining again. "I need to go in just in case we run into any traps that Kaiser left behind, Reach has to direct us as much as she can, Tattletale has to fill in where Reach can't, Vista and Vacate can both help us get through areas quicker, and Grue can black out any cameras they've got. You and Freezetag, your powers are too well known and obvious when they're used. Victoria's... well... less than subtle. Plus there's the fact that her aunt runs the place. And none of Kid Win's inventions are good for infiltration. But they _are_ good to cover us if we get into trouble and need help."

"What about Assault?" Chris asked. "Didn't you say he was going to make a distraction for us?"

"Yup." I nodded. "That'll be starting any time now, and as soon as it does, we've gotta move."

"But just in case anything happens that _**he **_can't handle without giving away who he is," Tattletale put in from where she stood with her team, wearing a suit not that different from my own. "There should be people out here to play cover."

Victoria scowled at Tattletale. "I haven't figured out what your other angle here is yet, but when I do..."

I couldn't see the Undersider's face, but I knew she was smirking as she replied, "What exactly is it going to take for you to accept that we're on the same side?"

"A lobotomy," Victoria answered flatly. "Poorly done, with dull instruments and a blind surgeon."

"Be nice." I coaxed my teammate. "The way we have it now it's three of us and three of them going in. That's as fair as we can make it. We chose who goes based around who can get in and out the easiest, without leaving any idea of who was there."

Then I leaned in closer to Dennis and whispered, "And because I need to know that if anything happens to us in there, you're going to keep pushing any way you can to get Trevor and the others out."

"You know we will." He confirmed with a nod. "But you're all coming back out. Just make sure you don't use your powers in a way that lets them know for sure who you are."

Victoria stepped over to me then, taking me by the arm to walk a few steps away. "Hey, I know I said I'd be there for you, and I am. I totally am. But I don't like the idea of working with these guys. I'm not just saying that. I don't trust them, and I think we could do better by just talking to Aunt Sarah and letting her know what's up."

"Maybe we could." I acknowledged. "But if we do, and she has to put in an official report, that puts her in danger. This way, she has complete deniability."

The other girl hesitated before sighing. "Fine. But... be careful. Don't take your eyes off of them. I don't believe that they've stopped being bad guys for a second."

From where she was standing, Vista spoke up. "Hey, I think that's the signal."

Looking to where she was pointing, I saw something that made me glad that even though the mask I was wearing wasn't _**mine,**_ it still hid the fact that my mouth was hanging open in surprise.

"Wow," Chris said slowly. "When that guy says he'll cause a distraction, he really means it."

Up and down the street, we could see every single car within several blocks had floated off the ground, hovering anywhere between a dozen and twenty feet in the air before they began to lazily drift back and forth, bumping against one another while horns blared and lights flashed on and off.

"How did he... how is he... that's not even what he..." Dennis was obviously gaping as well, hand raised to helplessly point at the floating vehicles.

"Hey," I shrugged. "He's good at his job."

Even as I said that, several of the vehicles floated through the air on a collision course for the building, breaking a few windows on a couple floors and setting off the alarms. The main parking lot was rapidly filling with security guards and PCIPS agents trying to figure out what was going on.

"And that would be our cue to go ahead and set off other alarms while they deal with the first ones." the fact was, even with Tattletale, breaking into a place as busy and as secure as the new PCIPS building wasn't going to happen without being noticed. Doing it this way, we hoped, would give the people **too much** to deal with before we could get in and out.

Or at least that was the plan. Turning to the others, I asked, "Everyone ready?"

"Ready." Grue gave a short nod for his group, raising a hand to cover Freezetag's mouth without even needing to look and see that she had been starting to say something.

"Sure, why the hell not?" Reach put in. "I've been a good guy long enough. Let's spice things up with some felony breaking and entering."

Pointing at the the cameras above two different lamp posts and the one by the side door that we were focused on, Grue summoned little clouds of darkness over each of them. Then Vista did her thing, shortening the distance between us and the doorway until the six of us could take a single step and arrive right next to the door.

The second we arrived, Reach put her hand on the door. It ripped inward off its hinges, falling to the floor with a heavy bang that was lost amongst the deafening sound of all of the other alarms already going off.

We moved in, and then everyone reached out to catch hold of Vacate. Fully rested since Vista had taken care of getting us across the long, empty street and parking lot, he was able to make his time-stop corridor immediately. Reach had described this corridor well enough that he already knew just how long to make it, and where we were going.

As soon as the tunnel was made, we sprinted forward, heading for the unlabeled door a hundred feet away that Reach claimed would lead to stairs. Once we made it, I took a moment to look around to see if we were clear.

"Two guys there," Tattletale pointed to a pair of men standing thirty feet away, facing the opposite direction as they stared out the windows at the floating vehicles. "Nobody else with sight line to us."

Grue cautioned, "Everyone stay quiet. Let's just get through this door before they realize we're here."

Vacate dropped the tunnel and we were as silent as possible, standing a few dozen feet away from the PCIPS agents. There was a keycard reader next to the door, but Reach ignored it and simply put her hand against this door as well. Instead of tearing it off its hinges, she behaved more subtlety by forcing it open at the doorjamb just as yet another window was shattered by a floating vehicle.

Grue went first to black out the cameras in the stairwell. Then, one by one, the rest of us backed through the open door before the distracted agents could notice us.

"Stop right there!" A voice demanded. We twisted around, finding a man in a security uniform, holding his pistol. "Nobody... nobody move."

We'd planned for something like this, fortunately. Grue extended his hand. As soon as he did, I attached a line between his glove and the gun, yanking the weapon out of the man's grip and giving it to Grue. That way, it looked like he was the one performing the telekinetic trick, throwing suspicion off of me while they looked for a male around Grue's height that could do something like that.

Once the gun was disabled, I yanked the man's radio off his belt, then pulled him toward us. Once he was close enough, Tattletale stepped in and injected him with something in a syringe. The man immediately dropped, slumping to the floor.

Noticing my look, she held the syringe up. "He'll be fine, it'll just knock him out for a couple hours."

I glanced toward Vista, and she nodded, scrunching her nose in concentration as she gazed upward, past all the flights of stairs before making a twisting gesture with her hands. "Done."

Curiously, I gave a little hop, then immediately yelped as I found myself a good eight stories higher than I expected to be. Reaching out, I caught hold of the nearby railing before I could fall back down (not that it was a long drop given the way that Vista's powers worked) and hauled myself over it.

The others followed suit, and we continued up that way, Vista compressing the space so that we could jump seven or eight floors at a time. In no time at all, we had reached the top floor, where Reach said Kaiser kept his true trophies. Not in his office, as I'd expected, but in a room down the hall that had ostensibly been used for conferences.

We had to go through two more security guards on our way, carefully leaving each unconscious with more prepared syringes from Tattletale. I felt bad about it. After all, these guys were just doing their jobs. We _were_ breaking the law, after all.

Eventually though, we reached the room in question. This one Tattletale opened, using a keycard stolen from one of the now-unconscious guards.

It was a truly massive conference room, probably large enough to play a regulation basketball game inside. There was a long table that took up most of the room, flanked by comfortable leather chairs. At one end of the room was a smaller, more personal desk with a computer mounted on it, and behind it there was a projection screen.

Without wasting time, Reach put her hand on the table and focused, ripping the thing off the ground and pitching it sideways.

As she knelt by the floor, Vacate asked, "Yo, how you know all this shit anyway, huh? Wouldn't think some little girl like you would be in the big man's main confidence, know what I'm sayin'?"

"You guys aren't the only ones that know how to find out secrets." She replied, focusing on the floor. As she pressed her hands against it, there was a rumbling sound. Then part of the floor was torn up and out, revealing a large safe mounted onto some kind of hydraulic contraption that was obviously meant to push up and out when it was used correctly.

"Ready for this?" I asked Cassie, already starting to put lines between the ceiling and the door of the safe.

In response, she cracked her knuckles and nodded, brushing her hand over the safe itself before leaning back and out of the way.

We worked together, each of us yanking upward on the safe door. But even with the force that the two of us could expend, it still would have taken too long to force that safe to open.

Fortunately, we still had Vista. While we worked at tearing the safe door up, she focused on creating small spatial distortions around it, breaking it up here and there.

Together, the three of us managed to do enough damage to finally tear that door off, revealing... an empty safe.

"Damn it!" Reach glowered at it. "This has to be it. Someone beat us to it."

"Probably the guy that's been using the plans in the first place." Tattletale put in from where she sat at the smaller desk, using the computer there. "And I think I've got something."

"What?" I asked, stepping that way. "We really need to hurry."

"Yeah, yeah." She waved that off before continuing to type away. "There's a camera in the corner up there, behind the mirror." Her hand gestured vaguely up into the corner. "It's not connected to the main security, so it was obviously something from Kaiser's era that they haven't found yet. I already shut down the feed and erased the recording, but look at this."

We gathered around the computer as she went on. "Looks like the camera pops on whenever that safe gets accessed. And look at what we have for the last person accessing it..."

As we watched the screen, I saw a thin, clearly drug-ravaged white guy standing in the room. He was rubbing his hands together nervously as he stared down at the open safe before reaching out to grab a briefcase that was in it.

He was familiar. I was trying to figure out why, when Vacate blurted. "Dude! That's Eddie!"

The rest of us turned to stare at him, and it finally clicked. "You know him?" I knew he did. It was the guy that Vacate had been with when I first met him, out of costume. The Merchant tinker who had shot Pandora with his cobbled together laser pistol.

"Sure, yeah, course I know him." Vacate was nodding. "We ran for awhile, but last I knew Wetdream was taking him in. I didn't know he got out again. I wonder why he ain't called me..."

"Can we focus on what's important?" Grue pleaded. "Is he a tinker or does he know anyone who could use those plans?"

"Sure." Vacate shrugged. "I mean, he was never all that good at making his own stuff. Eddie's ahhh, whatcha call it... focus, his focus was on making other people's stuff. He could like, study something someone else made, or like, their blueprints or whatever, and copy it."

We all stared at him. Grue was the first to find his voice. "Do you mean to tell me... that you knew we were looking for a tinker that somehow reproduced and improved on another tinker's plans... and you _**didn't think that this could be relevant?!**_"

As annoyed as even I was at that, I noticed something. "Look." I pointed at the screen, where the video had still been playing. "He's calling someone."

Staring intently, Tattletale watched him dial, before taking out a phone of her own. "And... got it." She hit the same buttons he had, then set the phone to speaker.

It rang three times before an annoyed voice answered, "This better be good. What is it?"

Behind the mask, my eyes widened. I knew that voice. I knew who Eddie the copycat tinker had been calling just as he stole the plans that would eventually lead to teleporting people into the Bird Cage.

It was Trickster.

"**He did what?!**"

I winced at Marissa's furious bellow, holding up both hands. "I'm just telling you what we know. The guy who stole the plans for the teleporter called Trickster while he was doing it."

It hadn't been difficult to escape the building. Reach had blown out the window of the conference room, and then I had used tethers to yank each of us to the roof of the building across the street. We'd met up with the others and shared what we knew. Then I gave Ethan a call to let him know he could stop whatever he was doing, and what we had found out, before going back to my parents house to talk to Marissa and Jess about Krouse. Meanwhile, the Undersiders were going to see about finding Eddie, since Vacate knew him.

Poor Mars just stood there on the other side of the kitchen table, gaping at me. Silence reigned for a minute before her attention turned slowly to the girl next to her. "You don't... have any idea what..."

"Of course not." Jess shook her head firmly. "I would've said something, Mars. I don't know what the hell's going on. But if Krouse is behind this whole thing, if he's the one that's been teleporting people into the Birdcage..."

"If he is, I'm gonna make him wish the Simurgh killed him when she transported us here." Marissa growled, pushing away from the table. "That son of a bitch just went too damn far."

"Marissa-" Jess started to say.

"No, Jess." Marissa turned back to her friend. "No. We've put up with enough of his bullshit. I'm not gonna say that Cody was right, because he was a psychopath too, but that doesn't make Krouse _better._ Just because they hate each other doesn't mean one is good and the other is bad. They're both crazy pieces of shit, we just happened to choose Krouse's specific brand of crazy. We let him convince us we were doing the right thing, that slowly moving across the country and using our powers to get money so we could save Noelle was the right thing to do. But what if there is no saving Noelle? What if we just made everything worse, compromised our morals and did... did all of this for nothing? And now he's... he's doing _**this garbage.**_"

Breathing in and out a few times to steady herself, Marissa gazed at her friend. "I'm done, Jess. I'm done protecting him. I'm done convincing myself to give it more time, that we have to be loyal. That was when the group, the team, were the only people we had, the only people we could trust. But that's not true anymore. I trust Madison." She gestured to me. "And I don't trust Krouse."

Jess remained quiet, looking contemplative for a few seconds before her head slowly nodded. "I know. I know what you mean. I just..." She sighed and looked to me. "No offense, I believe you. I just hoped that... somehow we could have the best of both worlds." A wry smirk touched the girl's face then, as she shifted in her wheelchair. "So to speak. I hoped we could leave Krouse, but still stay... at least somewhat allies. Because... Noelle..."

Her eyes turned away from me, and I nodded. "I get it. Believe me, I wish I didn't have to tell you about this. I wish it was some other guy. But Trickster is where the trail leads. It was his voice, I swear it."

Slowly nodding, Jess rubbed a hand over her face briefly. "Then, I guess we have to talk to him."

"Oh, we'll talk all right." I had never seen Marissa as angry as she clearly was now. Her fist was clenched tight. "We'll make him tell us what the _**fuck**_ he did, and un-the-fuck-do it, or he's going to find out exactly how bad of a sunburn he can get and still survive."

Jess reached out to put a hand against the other girl's side, bracing her before she looked at me. "I guess that explains why they kept trying to get you into the Birdcage. Krouse and Noelle hate you. They think you... well, that you stole their friends away from them."

Flinching at that, I shook my head. "That's not what happened. If they'd just... if Trickster would just... if he wasn't a..."

"I know." Nodding, Jess slumped back into her chair. "Trust me, I know. Noelle... I don't think it's her fault. This... whatever's happening to her, it's messing with her head. But Krouse, I don't know if the Simurgh affected him more than the rest of us, or what. But he's out of control."

"Then it's time to go put him back _under_ control," Marissa said sharply, looking at me. "He's been going after Mads. He trapped her brother in the worst prison in the word, because he was trying to trap _**her**_ there. No more loyalty, Jess. We have to stop him, whatever that takes."

"You're right." Jess let out a low sigh. "I'll send Luke a message, and find out where they are right now." Her gaze moved to me. "Unless you want to sleep first?"

I shook my head. "Couldn't sleep right now even if I tried."

She nodded, before taking her phone out and sending a text.

While Jess was doing that, Marissa came around the table and took my hand with the one that she wasn't clenching into a tight fist. "I'm sorry, Madison. I didn't think Krouse would go that far. I never even _considered_ that the person behind your brother and Miss Militia, and now Battery, could be **him**."

Squeezing her hand, I managed a weak little smile. "I know, Mars. He didn't occur to me either, even though I figured he wasn't very happy with me stealing one and... well, now two of his friends away."

Marissa opened her mouth to say something else, before frowning. "Huh..." She thought for a moment before cursing. "That son of a bitch."

"What's wrong?"

"When did Trevor disappear?" She prompted, a scowl settling into her features.

Blinking, I hesitated before offering, "During the Leviathan fight..."

"And what happened between you and Trickster right before that?" Mars asked.

"I threatened him," I said, slowly realizing what she was getting at. "I told him that if he tried anything to get at you, I was going to see it as a violation of the truce."

"And then Battery disappears _days_ after Jess leaves him." Marissa's voice was hard. "That piece of shit thinks he's being fair. They didn't _accidentally_ get Trevor when they were aiming for you. They were trying for him, because _**Krouse**_ decided that if you 'took his friends', he'd take your family. He couldn't take your parents because of Coil, but... god... damn it!" Her fist hit the table and she turned toward the other girl. "Where are they, Jess? Tell me Luke replied."

I bit my lip, frowning. "But what about Miss Militia? Why would he take her?"

"We'll ask him that once we bounce his face off the pavement a few dozen times."

Jess finally looked up from her phone. "Luke's ready for us. They're still at the church." She glanced to me then. "Hey, umm, you sure you're okay to go with? I mean, somehow going to pick an argument with the guy that we think has been transporting people into the Birdcage somehow seems like... well, might be a bad idea for you. I don't think Krouse will do anything to Mars and me, especially since I won't actually be there physically, but you..."

"I'm going," I said flatly. "If he is the one doing this, I owe him. And no way I'd leave Marissa and you alone, even if you don't think he'd try anything. Neither of you thought he'd do any of this either." I smiled a little. "Besides, I've got an idea of how to deal with that..."

The church that Jess had mentioned was an old, rundown place that probably hadn't seen a congregation in at least five years, if not longer. It was a dark, damp place, where the weeds had long-since overgrown the actual grass, and what had been a nice wrought iron fence surrounding the property was rusted, with half of it already missing, probably scavenged for the metal.

Marissa and I walked through the entrance together, both in costume, with Jess's newest creation prowling up behind us. She had made what I thought probably looked like a panther, but it was hard to tell for sure, because of the fact that its fur kept changing colors, blending in with its surroundings like a chameleon and making it difficult to make out details.

When we came through the doors together we found ourselves in what had clearly once been a beautiful room, full of dozens of rows of ornate wooden pews facing the alter at the front. Most of the wood was rotted through now, and I could smell things I really didn't want to know anything else about.

Right after we entered, a voice called out from the front, where the priest would have been. "You know, when Luke said that you guys wanted to talk, he didn't mention that you were bringing along your pet."

Trickster was standing up there, in full costume. A few feet away, in the west corner near the stained glass window, I could see Ballistic standing with his single arm gripping the railing next to him.

"Don't fucking call her that. And you're a liar anyway." Marissa couldn't keep the scorn and distaste out of her voice. "Why else would you be all dressed up?"

Trickster gave a little bow of acknowledgment. "I said that he never _said_ you were bringing her. Not that I couldn't figure it out." Stepping down from the pulpit, he added, "Besides, you haven't exactly come wearing party hats. What about you, Jess?" He was gazing past me. "That form supposed to let you stay out of my sight?"

"Speaking of out of your sight, where's Sophia?" I interrupted, stopping halfway up the aisle. "I thought you were keeping her with you.."

His shoulders raised in a shrug. "I sent her downstairs. I didn't think our meeting needed to be... plagued by that bit of drama."

"Drama?" I glared at him. "You mean the 'drama' where I take her back to prison where she belongs, for _**killing my parents?!**_" Try as I might, I couldn't stop my voice from going up. I'd told myself that we were focusing on getting Trevor and the others back, but just the thought of being near where Sophia was made me want to damn everything else and find her. One way or another, I'd put her back in the cell where her psychotic ass belonged.

"That was Coil's order." Trickster said quietly. "Sophia had no choice-"

"No, see, that's where you're wrong." I took a few more steps that way, eyes centered on him. "She had every choice. Every decision she made _**led her**_ to that. She chose to be a vicious, crazy little bitch who doesn't care about anyone but herself. Maybe Coil made her make that one decision, but every choice she made before that led to her being in that position, and even then, she could have chosen not to kill innocent people."

"So she should have chosen to die then?" Trickster asked, idly. "Would you have chosen to die?"

"If it was between that and killing innocent people..." I nodded. "Yes."

I couldn't see Trickster's expression through his red face-mask, but I had the feeling that he was staring at me like I was an alien or something.

"Is that why you're here?" Ballistic broke the silence, stepping closer. "To take Shadow Stalker to justice?"

As much as I wanted to say yes, I shook my head. "Actually, we thought we'd start with Krouse here. Maybe get a little justice for the shit he's been doing."

"Excuse m-"

I let Trickster get that far before opening my glove, which had been clenched into a tight fist. A blue washcloth that I'd grabbed from the bathroom lay in my palm. I connected two lines between the cloth and either side of the man's mask. Then I sent the rag snapping that way, letting it slap against his face, pinning it there so that it completely covered his eyes, cutting him off from using his power.

While he was prying at the washcloth, trying in vain to remove it, I used a third line to yank Krouse straight to me, before driving my fist into his gut, driving the air out of him in a rush as he dropped to his knees, choking for breath.

"Hey!" Ballistic was striding toward me. "We never agreed-"

The lithe, almost invisible form of Genesis dropped into his way. "Stop, Luke. You don't know what he's been doing."

Beside me, Marissa had grabbed Trickster's mask, and she nodded at me. I obliged by removing the blindfold, and Marissa yanked mask up and off, revealing a man with light brown skin and a long, thin nose. There was also a star drawn in marker on his forehead. "Use your power and I swear to god you'll regret it, Krouse. I want to look you in the eye while you tell us why you attacked Madison's family."

From somewhere to the side, I could hear Ballistic blurt, "Wait, what?!"

Sucking in air as he struggled to breathe, Krouse blinked a few times, looking back and forth between the two of us. "I... what exactly am I being acc-"

The sound of Marissa slapping Krouse filled the room, and he pitched over sideways, holding his hand against his face. "Fuck! Mars, I never attacked her family! What the hell?!"

"Come off it, Krouse." I shook my head. "I know it was you that had my brother and the others teleported into the Birdcage."

As planned, Genesis added from where she was, "And if you try that shit here and now, Krouse, I will take my own physical body and call the Protectorate to tell them exactly where you are, where Noelle is. So don't try it."

From his position on the floor, Krouse stared up at me. "You... you're crazy. Teleporting people into the Birdcage? If I could-"

"I heard your voice," I informed him. "It was you. Remember when you got that call a couple hours ago and no one said anything? I was there. We dialed the same number that the guy who built the teleporter that's sending people into the Birdcage called _**while he was stealing the plans for it**_, and you answered the god damn phone."

"Whoa, whoa." Ballistic held his remaining hand up. "One sec. You called a couple hours ago?"

"Yes." I didn't look away from Trickster. "He answered the phone and said, 'this better be good.'"

"Uh, no he didn't." I shot a look at Ballistic, and his head was shaking. "Sorry, but look, I haven't left his side all night. We went out for dinner around seven, and I've been with him the whole time since then. He never used the phone."

I blinked, looking from Ballistic back to the unmasked Trickster. "That's impossible. I _**know**_ it was his voice."

Abruptly, Krouse started to laugh. He tipped back over onto his side, chuckling as his shoulders shook with amusement. "Oh. That's what he was doing." Lifting his gaze again, he shrugged. "It wasn't my voice that you heard. It was my clone's."

While I stared in shock at that, Marissa actually slapped him again. "God damn it, Krouse! You let Noelle make a clone of you?!"

"We had to test it!" He shouted back at her, starting to pick himself up off the floor. "It was after Panacea did her thing. I had to see if it worked or not. Guess what, it didn't. The healer failed, and another me popped out."

"And you didn't think to mention that there was another, even more psychotic, you running around? " That was Jess, prowling up on the other side of him. "Maybe you could have let us know something about that."

"It was none of your business." He shot back. "We were handling it."

"Handling it?!" I resisted the urge to punch him again, barely. "How is this handling it? He's working with some tinker from the Merchants to teleport people _**like my brother**_ into the Birdcage! Why would he be doing that?"

Krouse shrugged. "Who knows why the clones do what they do. Anyway, his power's different from mine. Somehow he can switch places with anyone, anywhere in the world. But only people who match his general description of adult male, and only for a limited time. Usually anywhere between two minutes and twenty. Seems like the length is random."

I paused, squinting before pointing at the star on his forehead. "That's what that's for, isn't it? That's why you're keeping Sophia around, so she can stun him if he switches places with you and doesn't have that mark on his head."

Smiling faintly, Krouse nodded. "Different symbol every few hours, just in case."

"I wondered about that," Ballistic observed quietly. "Just figured it was Krouse being Krouse."

"Why haven't you taken him down yet?" Marissa demanded, still glaring at her former friend.

"Ah, well, it ended up being a little more complicated than I thought it would," Trickster gave another shrug. "Somehow, the other me managed to pick up some tinker skills of his own."

I blinked at that. "He... what do you mean he picked up tinker skills of his own? How does someone just 'become' a tinker?"

"Hell if I know, why don't you ask him?" Trickster scowled at me briefly. "No, really, go bother him for awhile and take that headache off my hands."

"I would," I growled. "If I knew where to find him. I haven't seen 'another you' running around."

Chuckling again, Trickster met my gaze. "You've seen him, you just didn't know you were seeing him. Like I said, he's picked up some tinker skills somehow. So who do you know that's a tinker whose face you haven't seen, who showed up riiiight around the same time that the other clone did?"

I thought briefly before realizing who he meant. "Defiant. The independent in the white and gold power armor with the laser blade. The guy who refused to join the Protectorate. He's..."

"My clone." Krouse acknowledged with a nod, still smirking even as he rubbed his face where Marissa had slapped him. "So go bother him."

This time, I couldn't help myself. I punched Krouse, knocking him back to the floor with a cry. "Fuck! I told you it wasn't me!" He held his now-bleeding nose.

"I know." I said flatly, while turning to leave the church before I did anything worse. "But you're still an asshole."

None of us spoke again until we were far away from the church. Finally, once the three of us (well, two and Genesis's creation) stood in a field behind a trio of houses in a cul-de-sac about four blocks away, I turned to look at Marissa. "You think he bought it?"

"Sure, of course he did." The other girl replied easily. "If there's one thing Krouse is sure of, it's his ability to manipulate others. He definitely believes that he's convinced you to leave him alone, at least for now."

Sitting back on the panther's haunches, Genesis asked, "Do you believe the clone story?"

I hesitated before nodding. "Yeah, I do. I mean, I still think he's a lying piece of shit, but about _**that **_I believe him."

"Yeah, it sounds like something he'd do, and then never tell us about," Marissa agreed. "But if he's telling the truth about that, do you still want to go through with the rest of it?"

"I do." I looked at the other two seriously. "Just because Krouse didn't actually attack my brother and the others doesn't make him any better. He created the guy that's doing it, and then kept lying about it. He knew what the guy was doing, hell, he knew what his cover identity was. He could have said something at any time, and he didn't. Not to mention the fact that he's hiding someone like Noelle in a basement and using someone like Shadow Stalker as a bodyguard." My head shook. "No, he might not be the bad guy in _this_ instance, but he's far from innocent."

Girl and panther looked at one another, before turning back to me. Marissa nodded. "You're right. And—gaaaaaaah!"

She jumped while yelping, and I turned to look the way that she was staring.

A lone figure stood behind me, having somehow appeared out of thin air. She blinked at Mars. "Are you in pain?"

"No." Marissa shook her head quickly. "You just scared me, damn."

"We frightened you?" Pandora seemed to consider that for a moment, before her mouth turned up and she showed her teeth in the most threatening and dangerous smile I could ever remember seeing.

Poor Mars shrank back reflexively while I managed, "Uhh, P-Pandora? What are you doing?"

She kept showing her teeth. "We are smiling. Dinah-Friend says that smiling assures others that we mean them no harm."

"Sure..." I nodded slowly. "Tell her to keep working on that with you. For now, could you... sort of... stop?"

On request, the clone immediately dropped her expression back to neutral. "It is done, we are in place."

"Are you sure you're okay with this, Pandora?" I asked, hesitantly. I still wasn't sure exactly how to talk to the all-too-dangerous clone. She was... better about the whole omnicidal thing. Clearly her promises meant more to her than they did to most normal people. She had made the deal with Crystal that she wouldn't kill innocents or anyone who wasn't a threat to her, and thus far (as far as I could tell), she had kept that promise.

Her head tilted as she stared at me with that blank, emotionless look. I'd realized before that it wasn't that she didn't have emotions, but rather, she lacked the understanding of how or when to express them properly. Like the whole smiling thing. She was an alien, trying to understand human nuances."We do not understand the question. We have agreed to your request. Is there now a problem?"

"No, no problem," I assured her quickly. "I was just expressing concern for your other self, that's all. I wanted to make sure you... she... you were going to be all right."

"We will not fail in the task you have requested of us."

We had never really planned on being able to make Krouse tell us the truth. Especially not in time to actually accomplish anything. Marissa and Jess had impressed upon me his ability to lie his way out of any situation. With that in mind, I had come up with the idea of confronting Trickster just to see what story he told, while leaving a Pandora clone behind. That Pandora would stay hidden and let us know who he contacted, what they said, and so on. The goal had been to jar him with a confrontation, so that after we pretended to let him convince us it wasn't him, he'd then proceed to contact the person or people he was working with (like Eddie), and the Pandora that we left behind could let us know (through this Pandora) what he was up to.

Instead, I'd ended up actually believing Krouse's explanation. It fit, and it explained why Ballistic wouldn't have seen him answer the phone earlier.

"Okay, Pandora, slight change of plans." I glanced toward Marissa before continuing to address the clone. "Can your ummm... other-self just keep an eye on Trickster and the others there, let us know if they say anything important, who they talk to, if anyone visits, where they go... that sort of thing?"

Her head gave a short jerk that I interpreted as a nod. "We are capable of that for you, Tether-Friend. You have assisted us in removing the threat that Coil-Man presented, and you have maintained your part of our agreement. You have proven trustworthy. We will do as you ask."

Genesis spoke up through her creation. "Are you gonna be okay around Noelle? The other clones kind of go... nuts when it comes to her."

Regarding the panther-creature briefly, Pandora answered, "We have removed the compulsions biologically implanted within our mind that would force our servitude toward the primary progenitor. She means nothing to us."

That seemed... kind of sad, somehow. But I shook it off. "Okay, well, just let us know if anything important happens for now?"

Pandora gave that short, jerky nod again. "Keep our finger with you. We will find your location when a report is necessary."

"Yaaaaay." I managed weakly, repulsed by the idea of keeping the finger that was already nestled inside the dart compartment of my costume. "Seriously, Pandora. Thank you."

She blinked twice. "Why do you profess gratitude before we have accomplished the goal you have requested?"

"Because you're... sort of... kind of a friend, Pandora." I shrugged. "And when a friend agrees to help, you thank them just for trying."

I had the feeling that she still didn't quite understand, but she said nothing else about it. Instead, the strange clone-girl turned away. "We will go now. Our other-selves are busy, and we dislike being spread too thin."

It was the first I had heard of a possible limitation to how far she could duplicate herself, but I didn't jump on it. Instead, I nodded. "See you later, Pandora."

She was gone then, and Marissa let out a long breath. "Well, that was... tense. Does she always give off that 'I'm being nice now but any second I could murder everyone in the room if you tick me off' feeling?"

"Actually, she's getting better," I pointed out. "It used to be everyone in the building."

After everything that had happened that night, I was exhausted by the time I reached home. I'd left Jess and Marissa back at my parents' house, with the promise to call in the morning once I had some sleep. I figured the next day would be spent getting everyone on the same page so that we could find either Defiant or Eddie (If the Undersiders hadn't managed it already), and get the device they were using to transport people into the Birdcage.

For now though, there was one more person I needed to fill in. As I came through the back door, I called, "Ethan? Hey, I've got some stuff we should talk about!"

Opening the fridge, I took out a bottle of apple juice, reaching up to tug my hood back and my mask off so that I could drink it. "And you totally have to tell me how you managed that car thing. That was-" I had just swung the fridge door shut and turned, when I came face to face with Krouse.

Jerking backward in surprise, I managed to spill the apple juice on myself while nearly falling over. My back hit the island counter. "What-"

"You just had to do it." Krouse lamented, head shaking. "You just couldn't... you couldn't leave me alone. We were fair, we were even... and you..." His hand came up to rapidly tap his fingers against the refrigerator in clear agitation. "You couldn't leave it alone. You had to go and... and bother them. You had to go and bother them and then I couldn't leave alone because-" He bellowed the next words, using his hand to sweep across the face of the fridge and knock all the magnets and papers into a brief flurry before they fell to the floor. "-_**IT WOULDN'T LEAVE ME ALONE!**_"

"You're him." I realized, holding my mask in one hand while dropping the now-empty apple juice bottle. "You're not Krouse, you're his clone."

"**I am who I am!**" The clone shouted, taking a step toward me. I planted a line from the middle of his shirt to the floor, and he came up short, glaring at me. His eyes twitched a little. "I am who I am. I'm trying to be who I am, but they won't let me. You won't let me. _**It won't let me!**_"

Grimacing, I used the line against his chest to throw the clone backwards, making him fly into the living room with a crash.

Quickly, I used the opening to pull the mask back on so that I could use the built-in comm. "Clockblocker, threat in Ethan and Sam's house." There was no response as I threw myself into the living room after the clone. "Clockblocker? Glory Girl? Control?" The last command should have connected me to the on-duty PRT officer in the control center.

Instead, I got nothing but silence. In the other room, I found the Krouse-clone—I decided to think of him as Defiant to avoid confusing myself- picking himself off the floor, chuckling. "No help. No help for me, no help for you, less help, much less. No calls, no interruptions, no breaking the plan."

I stared at him. "You're jamming the signal somehow. What... what are you doing here?"

His glare turned murderous. "You think I wanted to come? You think I like..." Laying one hand out flat, he used two fingers from the other hand to pantomime legs walking across his palm. "... being walked walked walked like a stupid little dog? You think I like you **MAKING ME COME HERE?!**"

"How did I make you come here?" I shook my head. "Why are you sending people into the Birdcage? Why are you doing any of this? What do you even want?"

The rage in his face immediately vanished, replaced by a contemplative look. "What do I want? She asks what I want. It asks, and I... and I answer... I say..." His expression fell into one of the saddest, most morose and helpless looks I had ever seen. "I just want to be me. I want to be my person, mine. My choices, my decisions, my actions. Everything me." Abruptly and without warning, he laughed out loud. His laughter nearly overtook him, making the man stumble a little as he guffawed. "But—but it won't let me, will it? Noooo it won't—it won't let me." Just as suddenly, his laughter stopped completely and he proceeded to stare at me flatly, his voice monotone. "Wanna be myself. Wanna make my choices, my decisions, but you won't let me. Why? Why won't you let me be myself?"

"I'm... not doing anything to you." I said slowly, confused. "Just... listen-"

"_**NO!**_" He screamed the denial so loudly that his voice echoed through the room. "You! You listen! You listen. I talk and you listen!" He pointed at himself, then me with each demand, finger twitching back and forth demonstratively. "I talk, you listen, I talk, you listen, I talk, you listen. Me! Mine! My decision. My words, your ears. My words, your ears. You shut up, just shut up!"

Realizing that this was going nowhere, I raised a hand, attaching a line between the man's shirt and my glove to yank him toward me. My other hand raised to punch the clearly crazy clone, but before I could, a literal forest of black lines popped up, leading in every direction.

Stopping short, with Defiant still trapped on a line right in front of me and my fist raised, I glanced around with a gasp. The tangle of black lines faded then, once I stopped trying to hit him. "What..."

Defiant gave a weird little giggle then. He held his hand up, and I saw some kind of remote. His finger held the red button on the top depressed. "You see? You see now? I talk, you listen, or boom." Smiling, he leaned in closer to me to whisper the word again. "Boom."

"A detonator... " I breathed. "What did you do?"

In response, he just waved that remote back and forth in front of my face. "Boom. You don't listen, you don't hear, and boom. Hurt me, I let go, and boom."

Bombs. He had bombs planted, probably everywhere in the neighborhood given the number of lines I had seen. I swallowed, slowly releasing him from my line. "Look, what do you want?"

Keeping that deadman's switch remote in one hand, Defiant scowled at me. "I told you. I told you before. I keep trying to be myself, I keep trying to be me, just me. Not him, not what he wants, not what she wants. I try to be me. But it... it won't-" His free hand slapped the side of his head several times. "It won't let me!"

"Who... who won't let you?" I was confused, trying to figure out what I could do to get that detonator away from him without making it go off. Where was Ethan? Was he even home? Was there any way that I could bypass whatever signal jammer Defiant was using and get a message out? What about Pandora's finger? Could I get at that so she could hear what was going on?

"The... the voices... the things... they say..." The clone scratched at his forehead so hard it was almost like he was trying to claw his way into his own brain. "Do this, do that, must do that, can't think for yourself. Must must must _**MUST!**_" His last word turned into a scream before he just as suddenly started to laugh. "You see? You see how it works? You do something to make him mad. You ruin something for him, and then I... I have to do something to hurt you, to make it even, so they shut up, just shut up! I have to make the voices stop so I can do my own thing, be my own person, make my choices." His eyes turned downcast and his head shook, his voice falling into clear depression. "It's not my fault. It wasn't my choice. I do things and they leave me alone. They let me be what I want, what I choose. But they come back. They always come back. Do this, do that. It's my choice, it's my brain, it's my body! Mine! But they come. His voice, her voice, have to listen, have to do... have to follow, have to help. Have to make you hurt so he doesn't hurt so I don't hurt!"

"Krouse..." I said slowly. "He's mad at me for going there? For hurting him?"

"Father and mother! They're mad! Very angry, very... very bad! Bad!" Licking his lips as his eyes twitched, Defiant's head shook. "Can't do this, can't keep hurting. Stopping you now, for good."

Drawing back, I stared. "Excuse me?"

"Choice! Always a choice, must be a choice. Can't be a hero. Two ways. Two ways to not be a hero." He ranted, waving the detonator. "Run." He pointed at the open front door. "Leave, bombs go boom. You leave, you are safe. But..."

"But you'll detonate the bombs." I said slowly. "You'll kill everyone in the neighborhood if I choose to leave."

His head bobbed, before he pointed at the nearby table. "Or..."

I glanced that way, and saw a small, innocuous looking purple crystal sitting there. "Is that what you're using to send people into the Birdcage?" I asked slowly, trying to buy time to think.

"Choices, choices, choices." He explained. "You will stop being a hero because you let people die to save yourself, or you will stop being a hero because you are not here! That's it. That's all. Tick tock, tick tock. Ten seconds. I count to ten and release this, then boooooom! Do it. Make your choice. Stand, flee, do it. One, two, three-"

"Listen to me." I said quickly. "We can talk about how to free you from whatever-"

He continued. "Four, five-"

"You don't have to be this way!" I shouted at him. "You can choose to be better! There's already another-"

"Six, seven."

"You can be a better person! You can choose to-"

"Eight, nine."

My hand shot out, and I grabbed hold of the crystal on the table. As soon as I did, Defiant stopped counting. He looked at me, and smiled. "Goodbye." He waved, almost pleasantly.

I felt a sudden, violent lurching motion that threw me backward with a cry. My stomach heaved, and I nearly threw up inside my mask before landing hard on my shoulder.

When I looked up, I was surrounded by blank, featureless metal walls in a dimly lit corridor. The smell of sweat, blood, and worse was everywhere. In the distance, I could hear shouts of encouragement, punctuated by the sound of some kind of fight. Despair, hopelessness, and depression filled the air.

I was in the Birdcage.

**Interlude 12 – Reach**

_Earlier That Day, Before The PCIPS Infiltration_

"Come on, you pussy. Stop being such a little bitch and hit me." Cassie Herren goaded the pudgy boy across from her while she held her hands up in front of herself. She wore a pair of focus mitts, the padded targets that boxers trained against. "Hit the mitts, damn it. Make me feel it. You wanna be a little coward your whole life just cuz your daddy was mean?"

To her annoyance, the goading didn't serve the intended purpose of making Theo Anders hit the target any harder. He gave a weak little jab, flinching even as he did that much.

"Fuck, you call that a punch? Come on, Theo, you can hit harder than that. The mitt isn't gonna break and neither is your hand. Just hit it!"

"Sorry." The boy mumbled, shaking his head. "Maybe we should stop. It might upset Aster."

"The baby's fine, Theo. She's playing with her cheerios." Cassie's head shook. "Don't use her as an excuse."

"Sorry."

"And stop apologizing so much!"

"... Sorry."

Sighing, the short-haired blonde girl lowered her hands and stared at the boy. Theo was older than her by a measure of months, already fifteen while she still had a few weeks to go. He was also extremely, annoyingly, passive. His father had made sure that his son would never, ever question him. "Look, dude, you asked me to help you learn how to take care of yourself, right?"

Hunching his shoulders a little nervously, the boy's head gave a short, almost unnoticeable nod. He didn't speak.

"Well, okay then. I'll help." Cassie shoved the boy's shoulder with one of the mitts. "But you have **got** to learn how to actually punch. Make a fist the way I showed you and _hit the mitt._ Put some weight behind it."

That time, he actually punched hard enough that she could at least feel it through the padding over her hand. "Good. See, no one died just because you threw a punch. Nothing exploded, and you haven't suddenly become some slobbering beast. Now do it again." She instructed while holding the second mitt up. "This side."

Theo still looked uncertain, but he punched again. It was light, pathetic really by any real standards, but Cassie refrained from saying so. The old her would have. _**Rune**_ would have mocked him for being so weak, for being Kaiser's son and yet hitting like a little kid. Now... now she just held up the first mitt, shook it, and said, "This one. Harder. Come on, you've got this. Ten more, Theo. Ten more hits, then we'll have dinner."

"Pepperoni rolls?" Theo asked. His voice was, as always, mostly neutral, but it did finally betray a tiny hint of enthusiasm. For Theo, he might as well have been jumping up and down and pleading with full-on puppy eyes.

"Tell you what, if you hit my gloves as hard as you can for the next ten hits, I'll make the pepperoni rolls that you like so much." Cassie promised him. She never exactly advertised the fact that she knew how to cook, but she'd been living with Aunt Kayden pretty much since everything with Kaiser had gone down. The woman had actually convinced the PRT to pull her out of the prison-bound van and let the girl stay with her on a trial basis. Somehow, Aunt Kayden (not that she was really her aunt) had convinced them to let Cassie join the Wards. It was a tentative arrangement, she knew. One real fuck-up, and there were at least a dozen guys in suits and probably as many in costumes who wouldn't hesitate to throw her straight into a juvenile detention center and toss away the key.

Aunt Kayden, in that moment, had her back more than pretty much anyone else that Cassie could ever remember. Whatever her earlier betrayal of Kaiser (And honestly, Cassie had never really cared all _**that **_much about the so-called 'family business'. It was just where she'd ended up), and the Empire, it had been Aunt Kayden who had made sure that Cassie didn't go to prison. That was something that she wasn't going to forget, no matter how aggravating certain people tended to be. Besides, it wasn't like the she'd constantly gotten along with, or even really liked, some of the people she'd been around before.

The following ten blows were, naturally, nothing to write home about. The boy was still flinching and pulling back rather than following through with his punches. But he was, at least, somewhat trying. Cassie figured she'd get him more accustomed to throwing any punch at all, then work on putting real force behind it. One step at a time.

As promised, once they were finished and Theo went off to change clothes, Cassie stripped the focus mitts off and headed for the kitchen. On her way past the high chair where little Aster sat playing with the sticky cheerios that were spread across her tray, the girl reached out to tickle the baby's neck.

Aster gave a squealing giggle and picked up two of the little bits of cereal in her little hands, thrusting them upward in an attempt to throw them at Cassie.

"Oh is that the way it's gonna be, huh?" Cassie made an exaggerated scoffing noise. "Is that the way it's gonna be?"

Though she clearly didn't understand, the baby still giggled at the voice, throwing another cheerio.

"Hooookay, that is it, buster." Reaching out, Cassie undid the the high chair, pulling the tray back before scooping the baby out of it. Turning with the baby held out in her hands, she made a slight swooping motion. "Whatcha gonna do now, huh? Iiiii gooootcha. I gotcha, Iiiii gotcha." Pulling the baby up and then back with each pronouncement, she finally brought the giggling, squealing figure close enough to raspberry her tummy. "Aaaaaaaaaaaahhaaaaa, miiiiine!" Kissing Aster's stomach and then blowing her lips against it again, she announced, "I've got my dinner. Iiii've got my dinner. Yum yum yum."

Finally, she kissed the top of the baby girl's head and bounced her a little. "You're a good girl, aren't you? Yes, you are. Yeeesss you are." The laughing baby brought a smile to her face, which fell away when she felt a presence in the doorway. Turning quickly, Cassie blanched at the sight of Theo standing there staring. Self-consciously, she placed Aster back into her high chair and replaced the tray before stepping over to where the counter was. "I umm, I thought she needed to burp or something." She muttered the excuse half-under her breath while starting to take down the supplies that she'd need for the promised pepperoni rolls.

Still trying to hide the blush that had overtaken her face, Cassie waved a hand toward the cupboard across the room. "Stop standing there gaping like a fucking idiot and bring me one of the mixing bowls."

As soon as she said it, the girl flinched inwardly. Turning, she saw the fifteen-year-old boy trudging across the kitchen, eyes downcast, and sighed. "Hey, Theo." When he reluctantly looked up, she managed something resembling a smile. "I'm sorry, okay? I didn't mean to call you an idiot. That wasn't what I meant. I was just... look, ignore it when I say shit like that. Or yell back at me, whatever."

The boy's eyes averted away from her as he spoke quietly, "It's okay."

Part of Cassie wanted to scream at him that it obviously wasn't okay, that he had to stop being so damn passive and just _**tell people**_ when they were being assholes, that he had to stand up for himself.

Instead, she took a long, deep breath and thought of what Madison might say. "Okay, bring that stuff and... I'll show you how to cook these. Trust me, Aunt Kayden'll love you forever if you make them."

As requested, Theo began to bring the supplies over to the counter, and Cassie started the process of teaching him how to make the pepperoni rolls.

Hours later, after everything had gone down at the PCIPS building (formerly Kaiser's company headquarters), Cassie was landing on the roof of Aunt Kayden's apartment building, having floated herself over from the next building using her shoes. As she'd told Tether, it wasn't the most comfortable or easy way to travel, but it worked in a pinch.

She was lost in thought about what they'd seen earlier. Apparently whoever was putting people into the Birdcage, that Eddie dude most likely, was working with the guy from the Travelers? Were those guys even considered a team at this point? How many of them were left?

The thought of what Tether and Sundancer did with each other still made Cassie want to shudder, but she recognized that as an ingrained reaction given her own upbringing. Still, just the very thought of two girls... Sighing inwardly at her own inability to completely suppress her reaction in spite of herself, Cassie was just starting to head for the roof access door when she heard a noise coming from the far side of the roof, beyond the door and past several air conditioning units and other bits of roof-related equipment.

Curious, the girl started across the roof, picking her way to the other side. Eventually, she came around the wall of the roof-access room and blinked at the sight before her.

Theo was there, and he had set up some kind of make-shift punching bag using old clothes and a basket set up on top of a couple chairs that were stacked against the nearby wall. As she watched, the boy threw several quick punches, just the way she had been trying to get him to do earlier.

Grinning, Cassie clapped a couple of times without thinking. The second she did, Theo's gaze jerked upward and she saw his eyes widen. It wasn't until the boy stumbled back reflexively that Cassie realized her mistake. She was still wearing the infiltration suit, with the black, featureless mask, rather than her real costume. Hell, it was made worse by the fact that the mask purposefully distorted her voice so that they wouldn't be caught by anyone recognizing an audio recording.

"Wait, Theo, it's-" She got out before the boy backed up too far. With a cry, he pitched backwards off the edge of the roof.

"Theo!" Cassie yelled, sprinting that way and diving off the roof without thinking. She dove, like she would into a swimming pool, plummeting the distance toward the ground of the alley below. Trying not to think about what would happen if she was too late, the blonde girl caught hold of the thrashing, screaming Theo and twisted around to put herself underneath him. Then she focused, using every bit of her power on every part of her clothing and everything of the boy's she could reach.

She couldn't bring enough of her power to bear to stop them completely in the time that they had, not with the boy's extra weight. But she did manage to at least slow them down enough that, when the cement did come up and smack her in the back, it just bruised and knocked the wind out of the pair, rather than killing them both outright.

Laying flat on her back, with Theo sprawled out on top of her, Cassie tried to catch her breath. Before she was anywhere near ready, she felt the boy jerk as he realized where he was. His eyes were still wide and he tried to spring away, only managing to slip and nearly elbow her in the gut. Clearly desperate, he made his hand into a fist as though he was going to try punching her.

"Whoa, whoa!" Cassie managed, reaching up to grab hold of the mask and finally pulled it off. "It's me, Theo, chill, chill!"

Fist raised awkwardly, Theo stared down at her, his mouth working in surprise. "C... Cassie?"

"Well who the hell else would dive off a roof to catch you, dumbass?" She spat without thinking.

Shifting a little, the boy raised both shoulders in a shrug. "I... umm... I didn't exactly think _you'd_ dive off a roof to catch me."

Flushing a little, the former Nazi shrugged self-consciously. "Yeah, well, I guess I didn't really think it through. Don't get used to it though, because I-"

Abruptly, her words were silenced as something pressed against her lips, turning her speech to a muffled yelp of surprise which, in turn, faded to a little noise of confusion at the feeling. It felt... good. It was... nice, and she found herself slumping a little.

It wasn't until Theo pulled back, face red, that Cassie realized what had happened. He'd... he'd... kissed her. She'd never kissed _anyone _before, not a single person other than family, and Theo, the boy who never raised his voice or even really expressed an opinion about anything, had just... he'd just...

"Sorry. Sorry. Sorry." The boy kept repeating, staring at the ground after he'd picked his way to his feet. His face was still bright red, and he clearly didn't dare to look at her.

"I... I... I..." Cassie was blushing just as much as the boy was. She had pushed herself up, and now the two teens stood facing one another, neither daring to look the other in the eye. As tough as the blonde considered herself, this was... the feeling that... the weird tickle that... the taste of his-

"I've gotta go!" She blurted suddenly. Spinning, she started to sprint down the alley, ignoring Theo's call for her to wait. She had to run, she had to get out.

She wandered for a couple hours, eventually putting the mask back on to avoid being recognized. More than once, she ran across a would-be mugging and put a stop to it. Part of that was that the actions were almost ingrained by that point after the training she'd been through, while another part was the fact that she really, really wanted to hurt someone so that she could avoid thinking about how badly she'd fucked up back there.

He'd kissed her! Theo Anders had kissed her. And she... hadn't hated it? What did that even mean? Worse, she'd run away. She had practically called _him _a coward earlier that same day, and when he kissed her, she was the one who had run off like a dumb little girl.

Fuck. What the fuck was she going to do now? She was _living _there. How could she face him after her reaction to his kiss had been to run away? How could she face Aunt Kayden? Fuck fuck fuck. God damn it.

Eventually, Cassie found herself migrating toward the neighborhood that Madison was living in with Assault and Battery. Well, just Assault now. The girl was probably asleep, but maybe she wasn't. Maybe she was awake, and Cassie could talk to her about what had happened.

Hell, it wasn't like she had a lot of other options for someone to talk to about it. She didn't have any actual friends. Tether and, to a lesser extent (in some cases much lesser), the other team members were the closest thing.

Instead, when she reached the house, Cassie found a strange, brown-skinned man leaving through the back door. His hair was long, and he had a hook-like nose.

"Hey!" She called out after landing on top of the nearby garage roof. "What the hell are you doing here?" He wasn't Assault, that much she knew.

The man whirled to look at her. "No. No no no!" He looked... really upset about something. "Free! I was supposed to be free now! Free to be me, to be myself. Don't be here. You aren't here!" His hand covered his eyes, and then he moved it, looking hopeful until he saw her again. Then his face fell and his shoulders slumped. "Can't be me, can never be free."

"I said..." Cassie jumped from the roof and landed in front of the man, glaring at him from behind her mask. "What... the hell... are you doing here?" She frowned, as something nagging at her memory caught up. "Wait a second, I know your voice. You're... fuck! You're Trickster, aren't you?!"

"Am I?" The man stared at her, his eyes pleading. "I want to be. Can I be? Please? Pretty please, let me be. Let me be me, just that. Just let me be. I don't want to. She didn't do anything. She was just here. no. No! I won't, I can't! Promised. Leave me alone!"

She punched him as hard as she could, making the taller, older man stumble a little with surprise. Then Reach put a hand against his chest and his pants, then used her power on his clothes, sending him flying backwards into the nearby wall as she growled, "Where's Tether? Where the hell is she? What the fuck did you do?"

The man's response was to giggle as he was held against the wall. Moving one hand just enough to pull something from his pocket, he bounced a purple crystal up and down in his palm. "All gone. Gone gone gone. No more problems. No more hurting me. Leave me alone, Mommy, leave me alone, Daddy. I can make my own decisions!"

"Gone?" Cassie felt her face pale. "W-what do you mean, gone? Where is she?"

"She went to live with the birdies." The man informed her, his voice informed her. "Chirp chirp!"

"No..." Eyes wide, Cassie felt herself slump, unable to maintain focus on keeping the man suspended against the wall. "No... not the Birdcage. You... you..." Feeling a sudden, bottomless rage boil up and take over at the thought that she wouldn't see the closest thing she'd had to a friend again, Cassie lunged forward with an inarticulate scream. Her foot lashed out, catching the man in the knee, just before her fist took him in the face. He stumbled, and she kicked him again, even harder, then drove her knee into his gut, propelling it faster by using her power on her own shoe and giving it a push.

"_**DAMN IT!"**_ She screamed as the man fell prone to the ground and curled up in the face of the onslaught, before kicking him again, repeatedly. "She was my friend! She was my only! Only! Fucking! Friend! I could talk to her!" Rearing back, she kicked again, as hard as she could. "Fuck you! Fuck you, you son of a bitch! You cock sucking piece of shit!"

By the time she finished attacking the man, he lay bleeding and groaning on the ground, mumbling something about being who he was and making his own decisions.

Panting, Reach stomped down on the man's arm that held the crystal. "This. This is what you used to send her in there?" Getting no response from the man, she glowered before reaching for the communications device on the belt of the suit.

"Hey, anyone out there. Fuck, I don't know. Tattletale, Vista, whoever has this shit on still. Call the Protectorate. They took Tether. They sent Tether to the Birdcage, and the fucking son of a bitch is outside Assault and Battery's house. Get them here, fucking now."

That said, she stared down at the broken, injured man, and repeated her earlier question. "The crystal. That's what you used, isn't it?"

This time, the man gave a short nod, staring pleadingly up at her through eyes that were bruised and blackened from one of her stray kicks.

For a moment longer, Cassie stood there and glared down at the man, her mind racing. What should she do? What else _**could**_ she do? Fuck, Rune wouldn't do a damn thing. Rune, the person she _had_ been, wouldn't give a shit about any of this. At most, she would consider catching the man and calling for help to be all she really needed to do.

But she wasn't Rune anymore. She was... better? What should _**Reach **_do?

What would Tether do?

With that thought, Cassie reached down automatically. Her hand grabbed the crystal, while she activated the comm. "I'm going in after her. I'm not leaving her alone in that hellhole. Don't you sons of bitches _**dare**_ leave us in there."

A response started to come through, but before she could even tell who was talking, a sickening, nauseating feeling came over Cassie, and she felt herself flung sideways.

Then, she was gone.


	13. Arc 13: Lost

_**Notes:**_Hellking666 - Aww, thanks. Madison was very much a blank slate, which I love to play with. As you might have noticed.

Starfox5 - Reach choosing to go into the Birdcage after Madison was **very much** a pivotal character moment, yes. It was important that it be her choice, without being overly coerced into it like Tether was.

And yes, Madison fails at having a life outside of the cape things. ;)

Imageination - Duelitist and the others will show up again later, for sure. I like to establish things early that pay off later. (Defiant *cough*)At this point, they're just random enemies for fight scenes, but later... who knows? :D

Thanks everyone for reading and commenting. I hope you enjoy this installment.

_**Arc 13: Lost**_

**13.01**

The air in the Birdcage was both artificially cool and stifling at the same time, the heavy air conditioning clearly wasn't capable of completely covering the fact that all of the oxygen was pumped in and recycled many, many times.

In spite of myself, I shivered a little. I was in the Birdcage. I was in the inescapable prison, filled with the worst villains in the world. Could I even survive a few minutes in here, let alone however long it would take for an actual rescue to happen?

"Uhh, just checking," I activated my comm on the off chance that it still worked. "Anyone there? Control? Clockblocker?" There was no response. I wasn't surprised. The Birdcage was cut off from almost every signal. I doubted it would be as simple as just calling out.

I'd barely picked myself up off the hard floor before a a figure came around the corner at the end of the long, dim corridor. He was a squat, barrel-chested bald man with a stubby brown beard. I didn't recognize him, but I seriously doubted he'd been sent to the Birdcage for jaywalking.

The man stopped short, and the two of us stared at one another for a moment. Then he turned to look over his shoulder, yelling out, "Hey, there's another guest! We got another one!" He was greeted by a distant, enthusiastic shout.

Rather than show any of the substantial fear that I felt, I made myself make an exaggerated shrugging motion. "Actually, I must've taken a wrong turn somewhere. I was looking for the Sears, and well, you know how confusing these mall maps are. Could you tell me if I'm supposed to take a left at Mrs. Fields or a right?"

Instead of answering, the man just began to stalk toward me, licking his lips as he made a low chuckling noise. "Happy birthday to me."

"It's your birthday?!" I forced mock excitement into my voice. "I had no idea! Here, let me give you a present." Extending my arm, I connected a line between one of the darts and the wall beyond the man. It shot that way, hitting the man in his top left bicep before he could move.

For a second, the man blinked down at the dart. Then he slumped to the ground, cursing me as he fell.

Unfortunately, I didn't have time to celebrate the brief, easy victory. As soon as the man fell, four more prisoners came around the same corner. Two were rather muscular, dark-skinned men, the third was some kind of tall, albino with long white hair, and bringing up the rear was what looked like a typical computer nerd, barely out of his teens. All of them started to run for me after seeing the fallen body of the first prisoner.

I started to back pedal while quickly attaching lines between two of the men's shoes. Yanking them inward, I forced the pair to trip themselves and sent them tumbling into a heap which, in turn, tripped up the other two.

While the group was untangling themselves and cursing one another, I spun to run the other way, only to find another handful of prisoners coming from that direction. One of those men held his hand out, and I barely threw myself aside by instinct before some kind of concussive force blew down the hallway. It was powerful enough to knock one of the black guys coming from that first direction head over heels before he slammed into the floor and didn't get back up.

Thinking quickly, I looked to the larger approaching group, arms spread wide as though thanking them for accidentally knocking out the other man. "My heroes!" Then I spun back to the first group and attached lines from the albino and the remaining black guy to the back of either of my gauntlets.

"If you boys want to fight so much," I said while giving the hardest yank that I could, hauling the two prisoners clear off the floor and sending them flying toward me. "Far be it from me to get in your way!"

As soon as the two prisoners were airborn toward me, I released the tether-lines so that they would continue on their initial trajectory, and dropped to the floor. The two men were hurled over my head and past me, colliding with the group beyond.

Then I was back on my feet. Extending a hand to attach a line between my gauntlet and the wall past where only the thin boy with glasses stood, I yanked myself that way, sailing past him.

Or I would have, if I hadn't hit some kind of invisible forcefield, sending a shock of pain through me. It would have been worse if I hadn't had the padding of my costume. My hand and wrist probably would have snapped if it hadn't been for the impact-lessening gel inside the gauntlet. As it was, the pain of hitting the invisible wall stunned me and I fell limp onto the floor, groaning.

Right. I knew who the nerd-looking guy was now. His cape-name was Impasse. Essentially, his power created an unbreakable, invisible wall of varying size in front of and to either side of him. One of his favorite things to do after he triggered was to go out onto the freeway on his motorcycle, get into the middle lane and then bring up his wall so that the cars on either side would crash. Another trick he apparently enjoyed was setting fires and then standing just outside the room so that his wall would block the door and he could watch the people inside as they died.

Now, he stood smirking down at me. Before I could recover, a hand caught my shoulder and hauled me to my feet. The albino man snarled at me, showing his all canine teeth. "Been a long time since I got to enjoy a good meal. I bet you taste amazing."

Right, the albino was a cannibal. Now I remembered. He was called Feast, and his power was, essentially, the ability to eat almost anything and briefly gain the beneficial properties of it. If he ate rubber, his skin would become rubber-like. If he ate steel, it would turn that hard. Consuming oil or other liquids would let him melt into a puddle that could then move around. And if he ate _people_, which he did, he would briefly (usually for around an hour or so) gain their memories and even their powers if they were parahumans.

He was holding me up, the side of my face pressed against the wall while he sneered at me with those teeth. "What... deliciousness... will you give me, hmm?"

Surprisingly, the next thing I heard was a familiar voice shout, "Tether, down!"

The second that I heard the voice, I forced my face down a little so that I could see the floor. Then I attached two lines between my boots and the ground, using them to yank myself straight down and out of the cannibal's grip before dropping flat onto my stomach.

As soon as I did, while Feast was still whirling toward the voice, Impasse was lifted into the air and sent flying forward, his wall barely high enough to miss me. The cannibal was caught on it and the two went sailing down the hallway to collide with the others before the boy could think to take his field down.

Rolling over, I sat up and stared at the figure in the black infiltration suit, mouth agape. "... Reach?" I managed to gasp out the name through my shock.

She reached down and pulled me back to my feet. "Good thing that guy's forcefield only goes in front of him, huh?"

"What... what are you doing here?" I was still trying to come to terms with the fact that _**I**_ was now trapped in the Birdcage. The thought of any of my teammates being here hadn't even occurred to me.

She shrugged, though it looked more self-conscious than dismissive. "You didn't think I was gonna let you have all the fun in here, did you?"

"What happened, how did you get here? Is anyone else-"

"Later." Reach pointed down the hall, where we could see the men regrouping and heading for us, no longer blocked by Impasse's invisible wall. "Fuckwad just dropped his field. Party pooper."

Grimacing, I turned back the other way. "Right, let's get out of here." Together, the two of us sprinted down the corridor.

We came around the corner and found ourselves in a large, open room. To the left there was a collection of half a dozen televisions, most of which looked broken. Beyond them, some kind of workout/exercise area with mats and weights. To the right, there was a ramp that led up and around in a horseshoe shape before coming down on the far side of the room. Above and below the ramp there were rows of cells. In the middle of the ramp, just beneath the top-center cell, where another cell should be, there was instead a short hallway with the words 'supply drop' painted above it.

Throughout the large room, I could see an painted M the wall several times. Apparently that was the cell block we were in. I had the feeling that the ten or so men back the way we had come were the only current inhabitants of M Block. Most of the cells in this area looked unused, the bunks obviously waiting for new prisoners. It made sense anyway. The Birdcage had been designed to never need any new additional construction, so there was a lot of it that went unused. I had no idea how large the place actually was, but I was starting to think that finding Miss Militia, Battery, and Trevor down here would be harder than I had initially assumed. That was if we could even manage to stay away from the literal hoard of nasty people trying their very best to kill us, or worse.

"Where are we going?" Reach asked, glancing over her shoulder at the sound of the approaching men.

"That way." I pointed at the hallway on the far side of the room that obviously led to more of the prison. "We can find Miss Militia and Battery, join up with them and figure out what we're doing next."

"If they're still alive." Cassie muttered. I gave her a look, and she held up both hands. "I'm just saying."

Sighing, I started to run again. "We need to find a way to get these guys off our trail."

"We could always turn around and kick their asses until they leave us the fuck alone."

"They're the worst of the worst, Reach. We might take a couple of them, but there's no way we can deal with all of them at once, not by ourselves and on their home turf. We don't know who else is out there, what their powers are, or anything else."

"Yeah, yeah." Cassie was running alongside me. "I just hate running from a fight."

We emerged from Cell Block M to a wide corridor with a four-way intersection, the south of which led back the way we had come. Looking up and down the halls as I tried to guess the right way to go, I assured my unexpected companion. "Trust me, I'm sure you'll get plenty of time to fight in here."

As I stood there, I noticed that each corridor that ran away from this intersection was slightly taller than the intersection itself, which created a sort of 'lip' area between the roof of the corridor and the entrance. Basically, the corner of the ceiling just inside each hallway entrance was hidden from sight from the inside of the intersection.

Hearing shouts behind us, I dragged Reach by the arm to the west corridor, choosing one at random. As soon as we were there, I turned and took one of the two metal balls off of my shoulder, tossing it onto the floor and letting it roll toward the hallway opposite the one we were in. Then I looked upward and attached lines from our suits, up to the ceiling, using them to haul us up and out of sight.

No sooner had I done that, leaving the two of us hidden from view, than the sound of footsteps announced the arrival of our pursuers. They stopped there in the intersection, and started to argue among themselves about which way to go.

Gingerly, I lowered myself down just far enough that I could peek under the lip and see into the intersection, where the ten men were gathered. Before any of them could notice my head, I looked beyond them, to the opposite corridor. Carefully, I attached a line between the metal ball that still sat, unnoticed in the corridor entrance, and the wall as far down into that corridor as I could see. A yank sent the metal ball flying that way, impacting the wall with a loud clang. The men spun toward the sound and let out whoops of hunger and delight at the chase picking up again, before they all started to run that way.

As soon as they were gone, I dropped myself and Reach to the floor, and pulled the metal ball back to where it had been, taking the time to pick it up and reattach it. Then I turned to my teammate and pointed down the North corridor. "Let's go."

We ran that way for a solid ten minutes, passing more empty rooms and avoiding other groups of prisoners, occasionally backtracking, all the while furthering my fear that it was going to take awhile to actually locate the people that I wanted to find. There was no way of knowing where they had ended up, and I doubted that asking for directions was going to do us any good. These people weren't put in the Birdcage for being overly helpful.

Finally, we found some kind of supply drop corridor in an unused section of the prison. The place didn't look like anyone had been there in awhile, and it had two different connecting halls besides the one we had used. Judging by the large tubes in the corner, it looked like the the primary supply distribution area for this wing, but the cells in this part of the prison were empty enough that it wasn't being used.

Or at least, it hadn't been used before. Reach and I had barely arrived and taken a moment to breathe, before of the tubes started up, startling both of us. As we looked that way, what looked like a plastic bin shot down through the tube, landing at the opening before the hatch slid open with a hiss of rushing air while the bin was pushed out by some kind of automated arm. Then the tube sealed again while the bin fell to the floor.

Frowning, I stepped that way and looked down at the supply crate. "Reach, it's got our names on it." I pointed to the words stamped on the lid.

"Who the fuck could get something like this set up already?" Cassie demanded, stepping over next to me.

I shrugged and reached down to pry the lid up and off. "Dragon, probably. She's the one that runs this place, isn't she?"

Inside the crate, there were several bottles of water, a pile of ready-to-eat meals, flashlights, a few other tools, a large carton of cigarettes and an even larger carton of candy, some novels wrapped in plastic, and a folded piece of paper.

I blinked at the cigarettes. "Uh, do you smoke?"

"Ew." Reach shook her head. "But that's not what it's for anyway. Cigarettes are currency. It's to buy our way, if we can. Probably what the candy and books are for too."

I reached for the paper, taking it out and unfolding it. Then I blinked. "It's a map of the prison. There's notes here... this is where we are... that's where we came in... and this..." I pointed to another section that had been marked. "She circled this spot. It must be where Miss Militia and Battery are."

"That's clear on the other fucking side of this god damn complex," Cassie pointed out with a scowl.

"She's got X's here in these areas... she wants us to avoid them... that means... this way here must be the safest path." I kept examining the notes that I assumed Dragon had made. "Look, down here. It says the area we want is Glaistig Uaine's block. That means we have to go from the men's area into the women's area. _**That's**_ what the cigarettes and candy are for. Safe passage into the other section of the prison."

"Sure." Cassie nodded slowly. "Safe passage, as long as we actually reach that spot in one piece. And assuming the people there don't just pick a fight to take the shit off our hands."

Leaning against the wall, I let myself slump a little, sitting down on the floor while keeping an eye on each possible approach. "Why are you here? Did they get you too?"

Sliding down next to me, Cassie shook her head. "Not exactly. I found that Krouse shitface leaving your house and kicked the shit out of him. I called it in on this comm system. Dunno who got the message. Then I sort of..." She trailed off then.

I blinked, looking sidelong at her. "Sort of... wait... no. Don't tell me you _**chose**_ to come in here."

"Hey, fuck you," she shot back. "If I hadn't, where would you be right now?"

Shuddering at the thought, I swallowed. "Point taken. But you didn't have to. You... you chose to come in here after me." I spoke slowly as the realization came, looking at her again. "You..." Unable to help myself, I leaned over and hugged the younger girl tightly.

"Gaaaaaah!" She squirmed and yelped as though I was attacking her. She might have preferred that. "Lemme go! Get off me, I ain't your girlfriend, damn it! Quit fucking molesting me!"

Rolling my eyes, I acquiesced by letting her go. "Cassie, seriously, you... you came in to help me, to save me. No one made you do that. No one would have expected it. Most people wouldn't have done that, no matter who they were."

I could sense her blush as she stared intently at the floor. "I ain't most people. And I still ain't your girlfriend, so don't go fucking hugging me again, got it?"

I shook my head. "No promises."

For a moment, we sat in silence, catching our breath. I reached out to the crate and took one of the bottles of water. Twisting off the cap, I tugged my mask up and off before taking a long drink, then passed it over.

Cassie took her own mask off and accepted the water. "Not afraid of someone seeing your face?"

"Who're they gonna tell?" I asked with a shrug. "I'll wear it most of the time, but I need to breathe."

After she took a long pull from the bottle, the other girl sighed while handing it back. "So here we are. Birdcaged."

"Just for now." I took the bottle back to drink. "We're getting out. We'll find the others, and get on the same page. Mars, Ethan, and the rest of the team won't let us stay in here. They'll raise holy hell. No way Costa-Brown will be able to keep this secret."

"So we've just gotta survive until they can do something about it."

I nodded slowly. "Yeah... just gotta survive."

"Think we will?"

Smiling a little sidelong at her, I shrugged. "I think my odds went up a hell of a lot because of you."

"If you hug me again, I swear to Christ I will leave you here and find my own way home."

**13.02**

Eventually, Cassie and I re-masked and got back to our feet. As nice as it felt to sit and rest for a few minutes, this area wasn't going to be safe forever. The prisoners in here had nothing but time on their hands to search for us, and eventually they'd start getting organized about it.

My companion took the lead, sitting cross-legged on the supply crate and making it float her down the corridor. The idea was that if she was about to run into anything nasty, my danger-lines would warn us. We had wondered briefly whether it was better to know if danger was coming from ahead or from behind, but decided that knowing if we were moving _into_ something bad was slightly more important than knowing if something bad was coming from the other way.

The map that Dragon (we assumed) had provided was incredibly useful. She had marked all of the worst areas, allowing us to gradually wind our way closer to the single spot where the male side of the prison became the female side. It wasn't anywhere near as fast as a direct approach, but if Dragon said that those areas were bad, I wasn't about to second-guess her.

"You know," Cassie glanced over her shoulder to look at me while floating down the hall. "You'd think that if she could provide a map and food, she could do something better. Like say, a tablet with up-to-date prisoner locations and self-adjusting route. Or one of those armored suits of hers."

"Google Maps: Birdcage Edition?" I coughed. "Yeah, in the second case, I doubt Dragon's going to risk letting a prisoner down here get hold of one of her suits, or anything too important. That's probably why she can't give us a computer or better weapons too. Anything she puts down here she has to assume will eventually fall into the hands of people she doesn't want to have it."

"Point." She conceded before returning her gaze to the front. "Hey, left or right up here?"

After glancing at the map, I replied, "Left. Right takes us toward Cell Block Q. She's got that whole section crossed off. I'm guessing going that way is a really bad idea."

We moved in silence for a couple minutes before I abruptly remembered something. "Wait up." Stopping, I fumbled a little for the release catch on the hidden dart compartment in the chest armor of my costume, then felt inside for the contents.

Turning back and hopping off her crate before approaching to see what I was doing, Reach frowned in confusion. "What are you-" Her expression changed when I took out Pandora's finger. "Eeeeughhh! Fuck, dude, what the hell?! Why are you carrying around a finger? We ain't even been in here a whole day yet. If you're going cannibal on me already, I swear to god-"

I rolled my eyes. "Calm down, I'm not 'going cannibal'. This belongs to Pandora. She made it so that I could talk to her through it."

Somehow, that didn't do much to reassure the other girl. If anything, she stared at me even more. Finally, she announced, "You... have some fucked up friends."

Lifting my gaze from the finger, I reached out to poke her in the stomach. "You'd know."

Even through her mask, I could sense the other girl's blush as she backed away, muttering, "Shut up."

Grinning now, I shifted my weight back and forth, swaying teasingly. "See... I think... that someone who willingly jumps into one of the worst, most dangerous places in the world with no guarantee that they'll get out, just to save me... I think that probably makes you one of the best friends I have."

Returning to the crate, her entire figure radiating embarrassment, Cassie muttered, "Man, your other friends must suck."

"Aha!" I pointed at her dramatically. When she looked back questioningly, I echoed, "'Other' friends."

For a second, she just stared at me, before turning away and hopping onto the crate. "Oh, fuck you. Just use your gross fucking finger radio thing so we can move on."

Holding the finger close, I spoke out loud. "Hey, Pandora. Look, I don't know if this finger is too far out of your range or whatever, but I'm in the Birdcage. That Trickster clone was waiting for me when I got home, and now I'm in here with Reach. I... I know you can't talk back to me, if this thing even works from this distance, but I need you to.,. to please take Dinah and talk to Sundancer. Tell her what's going on and that... that we're going to get out. Tell Sundancer to work with my team, and to be careful. Thank you, Pandora, if you hear this at all."

Once I put the finger away, Cassie gestured with a hand. "You ready to get moving again, or do you have a toe or a nose or something that you need to whisper at first?"

Coughing, I shook my head. "No, I'm good. Let's g-" In mid-sentence, a red line stretched from me to the other girl. Eyes widening, I stretched out a tether to yank her off the crate and to me. "Down!"

I'd barely hauled my companion off the crate and sent her flying toward me, before a figure abruptly appeared right to the side of where the crate was, hand lashing out with some kind of makeshift shiv at the spot where she had been.

The Asian man spun to look at me for just a second before his figure dissolved into white ash. My eyes widened at the realization. Oni Lee. But that meant... I dove forward, hitting the floor and rolling just as another figure tried to stab me from behind.  
>"Oni Lee!" I called out to Reach. "Keep moving!"<p>

At least he didn't have his grenades or anything, so his little suicide bomber trick was out. Still, we were essentially facing a briefly duplicating teleporter that could essentially be in several places at once.

Taking my own advice, I attached a line to my gloves and used them to shove myself backwards and up, narrowly avoiding the stab from the Oni Lee that appeared in front of me, while kicking the one behind me in the face a second before his figure collapsed into ash.

"Damn it!" Reach cursed as the crate she was flinging around hit another of the bodies only for it to turn to dust as well. "Where's the real one?"

"Good question." I turned quickly as a red line popped up, yanking Cassie out of the way of another attack. "I think we just need to-"

That was as far as I got, before something heavy hit me from the side, throwing me a few feet and knocking me to the floor. I tried to roll over, but a heavy hand shoved me down, while an unfamiliar, guttural voice hissed, "Good, good. Stay." I managed, with effort, to twist just enough to see a large, rather hairy man with an ugly, pockmarked face. His grip was like iron, powerful enough that he had to be a brute of some kind. "Stay."

I heard a crack, and then Reach fell heavily beside me, groaning from some kind of blow to the head.

Oni Lee and a third man, this one holding a table leg that had been fashioned into a club, stood just to the side, while the guy holding me down squeezed the back of my neck. "Good. Lung'll reward us for bringing you in. Get a nice welcome to Q Block, huh?"

Lung. He was apparently the leader of the area that Dragon had wanted us to avoid. No wonder. Hiding the fear I felt, considering the grudge that I knew the man had against me, I managed a weak, "Ohhh, you know what? I would love to meet up with my old buddy Lung, but I am just swamped right now. Could we pencil in a lunch date in... let's say two weeks?"

His hot, nasty breath washed over me as the man chuckled. "Funny. Funny girl. No, you meet Lung now. He's been waiting."

I started to respond, stalling for time, when an abrupt whistling sound filled the air. A chain swung out, wrapping around Oni Lee's arm. An instant later, there was a deafening **boom** that erupted from the chain itself, the shock wave blowing the man backwards and into the wall.

The guy with the club spun toward the source of the chain. Before he could move, I saw a man with hair cut in a sort of spiky flat top that was even more red than Dennis's step into view, his arms engulfed in fire. The club swung, but the man with the flame-covered hands caught it, forcing his opponent to drop the weapon as it started to burn. A swift punch from red-head set his opponent aflame, drawing a scream from him as he stumbled backward.

I was released as the man crouched over me stood, just as a small, spinning stone-like sphere flew between us. The orb hovered there, while a polite, careful voice from somewhere behind me said, "Please step away from the girls."

Oni Lee had started to come to, but another deafening boom erupted from the chain still wrapped around him, stunning the man again.

My guy slowly backed up, joining his companion, who had managed to beat the flames off himself. The two of them stood next to the fallen Oni Lee, glaring at the intruders.

By that time, I managed to sit up, shifting over to check on Reach, who had just blinked her eyes open and started to look around to get her bearings.

"They're in our turf, Spruce," the hairy man spat. "Q Block belongs to Lung, not Marquis."

I saw the man who had spoken before step into view then. He looked perfectly groomed to the point of obsession, almost like a Ken Doll. Everything about him screamed 'neat freak'. That hovering orb flew back and forth between his hands idly. "As a point of fact, they are in the connecting hallway, not Q Block. Lung has no more claim over them than anyone else."

The man who had been burned spat angrily, "He's got more claim than you! You know who this bitch is? Lung owes her. Now hand 'em over."

"Hey, we'll even make it fair," the hairy man added. "You let us take that one," his hand pointed to me, then to Reach. "And you can keep whoever the fuck that is. One and one, that's fair, right?"

"No deal." The man with the shock of red hair shook his head. "We're taking them both. Marquis wants to have his own word with them. Choices are, you drag your boy there back to where you came from," he nodded toward the fallen Oni Lee. "Or we keep going. Three on two, you wanna take those odds?"

As he spoke, a third man, this one dressed in black, stepped next to him, giving a yank on the opposite end of the chain that was wrapped around Oni Lee's arm to tug it back to himself, letting the metal links coil up like a snake around his own waist and up to his shoulder.

Hairy-guy glanced to the man next to him. The two seemed to consider their odds for another moment, before cursing as they moved to pick up their unconscious companion. "This ain't over. Lung wants her. You tell Marquis there'll be hell to pay."

"We shall pass the message." The neat-looking man with the orb assured him, looking unconcerned.

Grumbling, the two men dragged Oni Lee away, leaving Reach and me pretty much surrounded by the three who had... rescued us?

"You okay?" I asked Cassie, trying to gauge how out of it she was from the blow to the head.

"Fine, I'm fine." She muttered. "Mask's got some padding to it. Just... fuck, what happened now?"

Before I could respond to that, the tidy man turned to face us. "Ladies, the Gentleman Marquis extends an invitation for you to join him, to discuss a potential arrangement concerning your safe passage."

"Bite me," Cassie replied sharply. "Who says we need his help?"

"Uh, Reach?" I glanced to her. "These guys did just save us."

"Yeah, so they could have us for themselves." Her head shook. "We're just bones that the dogs in this hell hole are fighting over."

"We assure you, Marquis' word is as good as anyone's," the neat man promised. "He promises that you will be safe while terms are considered, and that whether an agreement is reached or not, you will be allowed to leave unharmed. He only wishes to talk."

"Might as well do it, girls." The guy with the red hair pointed out. I saw that while the flames on his hands were gone, his arms looked like blackened logs from a well-used fire pit. "There ain't gonna be a lot of guys in here willing to make a deal with you."

I looked at Cassie, considering for a moment before shrugging. "I... guess we might as well?" If these three chose to turn nasty, I wasn't sure that the two of us could do enough about it from our positions. And from what I remembered reading about Marquis, who had been sent away when I was practically a toddler, he _**was**_ an honorable man who followed a certain code.

Shrugging, Reach slowly stood up and offered a hand down to pull me up beside her. "Whatever. Just know that I _will_ say 'I told you so' when this blows up in our faces."

"Noted." I looked to the men. "Take us to Marquis then, boys."

Apparently, Marquis held court over Cell Block W. By the time we made our way through the block and arrived at the horseshoe shaped collection of upper and lower cells, I knew the names of our rescuers. Cinderhands was the name of the man with the red hair and fire power. The neat-looking man who did most of the talking was called Spruce. And the quiet man in dark clothes who had taken out Oni Lee was apparently known as Whimper.

There were a couple of dozen other prisoners spread through the open area. I noted that their televisions were all working, unlike most of the other cell areas we'd seen. All of the men looked up and stared as we entered, but none moved.

"Welcome." A man standing in front of the top center cell, on the ramp above us, spoke loudly. His brown hair was worn long, tied back in a ponytail. Even in worn prison clothes, the man looked... aristocratic. "Thank you for accepting my invitation. I trust your safety was assured?"

I had the feeling he wasn't just talking to us, but reminding his followers that he had given his word that we would be left alone. "Yeah," I nodded. "We got the message that you wanted to talk."

"Indeed." Marquis made a gesturing motion. "Please, join me." He stepped back into the cell.

Cinderhands moved to join the people at one of the televisions, while Whimper quietly headed for what looked like the shower area.

"Don't keep him waiting, girls," Spruce reminded us, standing back by the entrance that we had come through.

With a glance toward Reach, who was standing beside me with the supply crate floating in front of her, I swallowed as we started to walk to the ramp. "Better than a face-to-face with Lung, I guess."

Marquis was waiting for us. The place looked nice, for a prison cell. There was a single bed in the corner with what looked like better sheets than I had. A sheet of some kind had been put up around the toilet to create privacy, and on the other side of the room, a nice wooden table loaded down with several plates of food stood, surrounded by chairs. The man himself was sitting on one side of the table, gesturing for us to take the other seats.

Once we sat down, I looked at the prison block leader. "So, you're Marquis?"

The man smiled faintly. "Indeed. And you are Tether, and..." He looked at Cassie uncertainly.

I briefly considered lying to keep some kind of possible advantage, but dismissed that thought as potentially more trouble than it was worth. "This is Reach."

"How ya doin'?" Cassie spoke dryly, twitching a finger to make the plastic bin settle down on the floor beside her..

"I am quite well, actually." Marquis looked between both of us. "Please, I'm sure you're hungry." He gestured to the food on the table.

It took only a moment of hesitation before I tugged the end of my mask up enough to expose my mouth, picking up one of the sandwiches that lay there to take a bite. I was famished after everything that had happened. I was also exhausted, but there wasn't time to worry about that.

Marquis watched for a moment while the two of us ate, before speaking again. "I believe that it's safe to say that you two would like to reach the other... shall we say, guest heroes on the other side of this prison. Preferably without being further accosted, yes?"

"That... would be nice." I agreed carefully, finishing the sandwich before taking another. The food really was good. Or maybe I was just that hungry.

"I can offer you safe passage all the way to the entrance to the female side of the prison, where your companions are." Marquis explained. "Not only will my own people leave you be, I will provide guards to help escort you that far, and to negotiate with the women there."

"What's the catch?" Cassie demanded. "What do we have to do for you?"

Apparently unbothered by her directness, Marquis held up several fingers. "Three things, all presuming that you will not be in here forever."

"It's an inescapable prison," I pointed out. "It's not made to let anyone get out."

He just smiled faintly at me. "Indeed. And yet, somehow I feel that 'inescapable' will not extend as far as preventing your rescue. So, on that assumptions..." He touched his first finger. "When you leave this place, you will speak to the authorities, passing along word of our help in this matter. You will ask that, in payment, we receive a new shipment of televisions and a couple of computers, as well as several other perks such as better food. Spruce will provide you with a complete list."

"They might not listen to us." I glanced toward Reach before turning back to the man. "We can't promise any of this."

"I ask only that you promise to do your best." Marquis assured me. "I believe that you, at least, are trustworthy. If you say that you will pass the request, and do what you are _capable _of doing to ensure it is followed, that is enough."

I hesitated, trying to think before nodding slowly. "Okay, what about the other two?"

"Second, we would like some form of communication to our loved ones." Marquis continued. "Some of the people in here have been out of contact for... many years. We would like one day a week in which we may speak with those that care about us on the outside. A face-to-face visit is, of course, impossible. But even so much as a phone call would be... acceptable."

"Right." I could agree to that. Even people like the ones in here should be able to talk to their families, assuming people_wanted_ to talk to them. "We'll pass that along too. And the third thing?"

For a moment, Marquis was still and silent. His fingers drummed on the table briefly before he spoke again. "The third request is much more personal. The first two you may follow merely by speaking on our behalf. The third request, _**my**_request, you must do yourself." He produced a sealed envelope, placing it on the table between us. "This is a letter that I have written to my daughter. I wish you to keep it safe, and deliver it to her once you have left this place."

"Your daughter?" I asked hesitantly. "How am I supposed to find her?"

He smiled faintly. "You know her quite well, I believe. She was taken in by the hero known as Brandish."

I blinked, mouth opening before I got what he meant. "Wha—Amy?" My eyes widened as I blurted, "Panacea is your daughter?"

"Holy shit." Cassie muttered next to me.

"Quite." Marquis gave another slight nod. "Though I know her as Amelia. Deliver the letter, unopened, to my daughter. Then pass those two requests along and do whatever you are capable of doing to ensure that they are followed. Do those three things, and you have my word that you will be delivered safely to the other side of the prison. You may even rest here first, in a private cell with no worry that anyone here will bother you."

I hesitated, thinking it through while glancing toward Reach.

"Your call." She shrugged. "Doesn't seem like too much to ask for."

"It may seem like little to you girls." Marquis' voice was soft. "Yet I assure you, those three things are worth more than your lives to people here."

After another second, I nodded. "Okay." My head bobbed in a nod. "Deal. You let us sleep, then get us to the other side of the prison, and we'll do what you want."

"Excellent." Marquis smiled at us. "Thank you, girls. You will not regret this arrangement."

We didn't just blindly trust Marquis, of course. Not any more than we had to, anyway. When Cassie and I were left in the private cell that the man had promised, the entrance blocked by a fence of interlocking bone shards that he had summoned, we didn't both crash and risk leaving ourselves exposed to either a betrayal, or one of Marquis' men breaking rank. Instead, we agreed to take turns. I would sleep first, while she waited up and kept watch. Then she would wake me and take her chance to rest.

I told myself it was a futile effort, that there was no way I'd be able to rest here, with as much danger as we were in. Somehow, however, my eyes closed when I laid down on the cot and I was out like a light, against all expectation. Apparently, as tired as I was, even in a place like this, I just couldn't keep my eyes open.

According to the clock that we could see on the far wall of the cell block, through the gaps in the bone wall, four and a half hours had passed when Cassie nudged me with her foot. She was sitting on the floor across from the bunk, using the small light by the metal desk to read one of the books from the supply crate.

"Anything decent?" I asked quietly while gesturing to the novel, once I was oriented and awake.

Cassie shrugged, tossing it aside. "Just some shitty romance garbage. Something to pass time." Rising, she moved to haul herself up onto the upper bunk, settling above me. "And now it's passed, so I'm going to bed."

I pushed myself out of the lower bunk so that I wouldn't fall asleep again, and rose to stand next to the cell entrance. "See anything interesting?"

It took her a second to respond. "Nope. Well, unless you count them auctioning off who gets to make each of us their prison wives as interesting."

My head must have looked funny as it jerked that way, because I heard a low chuckle from the shadows engulfing the bunk. "I'm fucking with you."

"Jerk." I muttered, leaning back against the wall. "Go to sleep."

Silence returned, and I thought that Cassie had fallen asleep. However, a couple minutes later, her quiet voice came back. "Did you always know you were lesbo?"

I choked a little, eyes widening at the question. "Err, what, huh?"

"Lesbo." I saw the shadow of the girl laying on her side, facing away from me and toward the wall. "You know, gay? What, I can't use that word either? Fuck, people are sensitive."

I shook my head slowly, choosing to move on. "What do you mean, did I always know?"

"I mean, how long have you known you were gay? I mean, if you are gay. Wait, are you a switch-hitter, or just-"

Coughing, I interrupted. "I didn't really know I liked girls until... Sundancer. Mostly."

The curiosity in her voice was palpable. "Mostly?"

I felt my face heat up a little. "Well, now that I think about it... in retrospect... I think I might have had a little, tiny bit of a crush on... on Shadow Stalker. For a little bit."

"The psycho girl?" Cassie sounded surprised. "You had a crush on the girl that..." Even she wasn't callous enough to keep talking, though she gave a low whistle. "Fuck."

"Yeah, I... I don't know. I thought she was pretty, and I loved watching her run. Every time she... complimented me or... or anything like that, it made me happy. It made me want... to make her happy some more, to make her proud of me. I... didn't really recognize it at the time, but... yeah, I think I had a little bit of a... a crush on her, even if I didn't exactly know what it was."

"So how do you feel about that now?"

"How do I feel about it?" I let out a long, heavy sigh. "I hate her. I hate everything about her. She killed my parents. Yeah, she did it because Coil threatened her, but she still did it. She wouldn't have been in that situation if she wasn't already a psychopath that refused to accept responsibility for killing someone else, accident or not. And the thought that I ever liked her, that I ever wanted to impress her, it makes me want to throw up. Not just because of who and what she is and what she's done, but for what that says about the way _**I **_was, and what I was willing to... overlook."

Again, Cassie was quiet for a few moments before she spoke. "But... with Sundancer, who... who kissed who first? I mean, who started it?"

"That's... pretty personal, but... well, she did. Sort of. She asked if it was okay, and then... well, I liked it. I guess I knew I liked her before then, but that was what really sealed it."

"So you knew when she kissed you, you knew how you felt. Is that the way it's supposed to work? I mean, you weren't... confused still?"

I frowned, shaking my head. "No I... I wasn't confused. Why are you asking all this stuff, anyway?" Then it hit me, belatedly, and I felt stupid. "Wait a second, someone kissed you, didn't they?"

"Okay, that's enough right there. We are not having this conversation anymore."

Smiling a little, I teased, "Was it someone I know?"

"No," she answered quickly. There was a pause as Cassie realized that she had just confirmed that there _was_ someone, before she muttered, "Damn it."

"Reach," I said quietly. "You're a... you're almost a fifteen-year-old girl. You're allowed to kiss someone, you're allowed to_like_ someone. No one's going to think you're any less tough or whatever just because you kiss someone and like it. It's... okay to care. It's okay to feel."

The silence dragged on after that, to the point that I thought she wasn't going to respond at all. Finally, she said, in a voice that was almost too quiet for me to hear, "I don't know how."

"You... you don't know how to... feel?"

The sarcasm jumped back to her voice. "Believe it or not, being a Nazi Supervillain is not all that conducive toward strong emotional bonding and growth. I don't fucking know how I feel about... any of it. I feel _something_, but it's all... it's all completely fucked up in my head. I don't know if I liked... just... the kiss, or if I liked _him _kissing me, or... or what. I don't fucking know. And then I fucked it all up anyway."

"What do you mean, you fucked it up?"

"I ran away." Her voice was quiet again, the shame apparent. "Get it? He kissed me and I ran away. I'm a god damn pussy coward. I freaked out and took off. Now I'm stuck in here. Do you get that? The next thing he's going to hear is that... is that he kissed me, and I jumped into the **Birdcage **to get away from him. Doesn't matter how he felt before, or how I feel, now he'll hate me."

I chuckled and shook my head. "Reach, what he's going to hear was that you were so... brave, so amazing, that you did what almost no one else would have. You willingly went to one of the worst places in the world, just to save someone. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but that's not cowardly. That's heroic. So... no, he won't hate you for it. Which means you just have to ask yourself a question. You don't have to answer it right now, and you don't have to tell me the answer at all. But think about it."

"What's that?"

"Ask yourself... if you closed your eyes right now, and someone kissed you-"

"This had _better_ not be a come-on."

Rolling my eyes, I pressed on. "If you closed your eyes and someone kissed you, even someone you knew, would you be happy or sad if it was someone other than him?"

Cassie was quiet for a few seconds before asking, "You really think we're gonna get out of here?"

"Yeah," I answered softly. "We are totally getting out of here. Now go to sleep so we can kick some more ass and make it happen."

This time, her silence stretched out until I knew she actually was asleep. I was left to sit in the dim light, wondering how everything was going on the outside. I had no way of knowing what was happening, how any of the people who mattered to me were reacting. They could be in danger, could be... could be putting themselves through god knew what, and there was nothing I could do about it.

As softly as I could, I whispered, "Marissa... Ethan... please be okay. Please. I swear I'll find a way. I'll get Sam and Trevor and get out. Just... just be okay."

Marquis was as good as his word, no one bothered us through the rest of the night. Some hours later, after I'd let Cassie sleep as long as I dared, we were given a chance to shower (with another wall of bones blocking anyone from entering, and while each of us stood guard for the other), and eat something.

When we left the cell block, and began to be escorted back out of Marquis' area, and toward the female side of the prison, we were accompanied by no less than five of his men. Whimper, Cinderhands, and Spruce were back from the day before, and they had been joined by a hulking brute of a man with a mouthful of sharp gold teeth, and a smaller Hispanic guy who carried two large, heavy looking pouches over either shoulder.

Spruce gave me the list of new perks and improvements they were asking for in exchange for helping us. I tucked it away in the compartment of my costume along with the letter from Marquis to his daughter.

His daughter. Panacea was Marquis' daughter, which meant that Pandora was... what, _also_ his daughter? How did that work exactly?

I'd spent part of the night wondering if I should actually tell Marquis about the existence of Pandora. She did want to be a real person, and her... sort of... biological father knowing she existed might have been important to that end.

On the other hand, for all his pretty words and sense of honor, I couldn't forget that Marquis was a bad guy. Not only that, but he was **such** a bad guy that he'd been put away in the Birdcage. Telling him that he had a potential S-Class threat that he could influence really didn't seem like a very good idea, all things considered.

For that matter, telling _Pandora_ that she had a father in the Birdcage also seemed like it might backfire if she decided she was going to get him out, or even just, well, visit. Not that lying to her about it was a good idea either, considering how she might react... I needed to think. I needed to figure out who to tell what and how soon to tell them.

In any case, I thought it might be better to attempt to get _Amy _and Pandora on at least something resembling speaking terms first. If I really wanted to give Pandora a family member to pay attention to, the girl that she had been cloned from, who she had already referred to as 'sister', and who was one of the most important and dedicated healers in the country seemed like a better choice than the super-criminal with the life prison sentence.

"So these perks you guys are asking for," Reach spoke up after we had been making our way through the corridors with our escort for awhile. "You keeping them for yourselves, or letting the whole prison have 'em?"

It was Spruce who answered. "That would be the true beauty of the arrangement. The benefits extend to the entire prison, but the deal requires that Marquis remain the de facto spokesman. Without him or his designated successor, the deal is arranged to fall apart. So if anyone causes too much of a problem, they get cut off from the new benefits. And if anyone tries to depose Marquis himself, they fuck over everybody in the prison."

"So people have incentive to keep Marquis safe, even if they're not on his side." I realized then. "If he gets this deal to go through, he's suddenly the number one man in here, even for people who hate his guts. Because no one's going to let him die and risk pissing off every other prisoner who suddenly doesn't have these additional privileges."

"Indeed." The tidy man gave a short nod, glancing toward me. "He also bears a grudge against those who wrong him, so if you think that you can just take our protection and then not fulfill your end of the deal, you will find that Marquis' reach extends further than you might imagine."

"We said we'd pass along the message and try to convince them to accept the deal," I said firmly. "And we will. We'll keep our end."

Spruce didn't look like he was sure of that, but he simply nodded.

Several times, we passed small groups of prisoners that were clearly looking for the two of us. They always stopped and glared at our escort, but apparently none of them dared jump all of us together. Or maybe their fear of starting a war with Marquis was stronger than their urge to try grabbing us.

Either way, we were left alone until we reached the single corridor that connected this side of the prison to the female side.

At the other end of the hall, I could see two female figures. One was a fairly muscular dark-skinned woman in a black tank top, with tattoos of flames stretching down from both of her shoulders to her fingers.

The other female standing guard was clearly barely a couple years older than I was. Her black hair was worn in a short pony-tail, and it looked like she was half-Asian.

"Wait here," Spruce told us. "I'll speak with Graven and make the arrangement." He moved down the corridor, hands up where the two females could see them. The woman in the black tank top moved to meet him, and they began to speak.

"Not many people to guard this area," I noted quietly.

Cinderhands chuckled next to me. "They don't need many. Not when they've got Ruin."

"Ruin?" The name was familiar, but I wasn't sure why.

He nodded toward the younger girl with the partial Asian features. "Destructive voice. Any time she says anything, even a god damn whisper, it sends out some kinda fucking disintegration wave that destroys every bit of biological material it hits. She stubs her god damn toe and says 'ow', she'll wipe out anyone and anything living inside of fifty feet ahead of her. Walls and armor don't do shit to block it."

Cassie noted, "She looks young. What'd she do to end up in here?"

"Chose it," Cinderhands replied. "I guess when her power came out, she fucking... took out a bunch of people in a mall or something before she knew what was going on. Didn't even dispute the charges or try to defend herself. She plead guilty and asked for the Birdcage." He snorted. "Guess she figured if she ever accidentally said anything, killing anyone in this shit hole wasn't that big of a deal."

By that time, Spruce was returning to us. "Give them the cigarettes and half of the candy. Then head for Glaistig Uaine's area and give her the rest of the candy, and the books. Make sure they know it's tribute for Uaine, and that you're looking for the other heroes."

For all I knew, Spruce might have been a serial rapist murderer. But he had been polite to us so far, so I returned the favor. "Thank you, sir."

He just raised an eyebrow before stepping out of the way. "Good luck to you."

Together, Cassie and I walked to the other end of the corridor. The black woman, Graven apparently, looked us up and down. "We gettin' too damn many do-gooder bitches in here. Gimme the cigs."

While she was rooting through the supply crate to make sure we were handing over what they'd been promised, I looked toward the other girl. Ruin met my gaze silently, lifting her hand in a wave before looking away, refocusing on the group of men at the other end of the corridor who were waiting for us to move out of sight.

Once Graven was satisfied, she jerked a thumb over her shoulder. "You want Block C. Follow the arrows. When you get there, give the candy and books to the guard there, let 'em know it's for Glaistig Uaine."

"Yeah, we got it." Reach floated the crate back up once more, turning to wave almost jauntily back at the men who had escorted us before stepping through the narrow doorway.

"Thanks," I said quietly before passing through the entrance, keeping my eyes open. I wasn't under any delusions that we were that much safer on this side of the prison. It wasn't like being female stopped the prisoners here from being just as nasty as the guys we had just left behind.

Together, Reach and I followed both the arrows on the walls and the map that Dragon had provided. There were fewer areas on this side that she had marked as off limits, but they still existed.

As we passed the cell blocks on this side of the prison, I could see women standing around in small groups. They all stared at us while we passed by, and I could hear various whispers about what we were doing and whether we'd be sticking around.

We were still a couple cell blocks away from our destination when a familiar voice called out from down one of the supply corridors. "H-hey!"

I turned that way, shocked by the sound. "Trevor?"

My brother was there. My... my brother. My eyes widened, and I very nearly blew my entire identity by running up to hug him. Trevor was there. However strained our relationship might have become in the last few years didn't matter just then. He was my _**brother**_, the... the only other person who could feel the way I felt about our parents. Our...

I froze. Did he know? Oh god, did he know that Mom and Dad were... My breath caught sharply, while Trevor continued to wave at us almost frantically as he jogged up to meet us. "Hey! Hey it's really you! You're... wait, did you just say my name?"

I couldn't let him know who I was. Not... not now, not like this. Remembering to activate the voice changer with my glove that time, I coughed. "Of course, they... we found out you were in here."

Beside me, Reach waved a hand. "Yo, I'm not invisible am I?"

Trevor blinked at her. "Who're you?"

"This is Reach. She's... another Ward." I said carefully.

"Oh shit. You're that Naz-"

"Well, sure glad you're safe." I interrupted. "Are Miss Militia and Battery with you?"

For a second, Trevor just stared at me, hesitating. My brother looked... pretty good actually, for being trapped in this prison for so long. He looked fed and healthy and... safe, come to think of it. Miss Militia must have been doing a hell of a job taking care of him.

"Hello?" Reach was waving a hand in front of his face. "You alive in there? She asked you a question."

Snapping out of whatever daydream he'd been lost in, Trevor's head bobbed. "Err, yeah. Yeah." He coughed and turned. "Miss Militia and Battery, they're... back this way."

I started to follow as he walked, and Reach nudged me, whispering, "Is he always this weird?"

Before I could respond, we passed through the doorway in the corner of the supply corridor, emerging into a dark room.

"Hey, Tre-" I started to ask if we'd gone the wrong way, just as the lights came on. The room wasn't that large. On one end I could see the pipes that delivered supplies, and three figures stood there waiting for us. None were Miss Militia, or Battery.

The man in front was a heavy set, balding man that looked more like a bank branch manager or a high school social studies teacher than a super villain.

"Who are-"

That was as far as I got, before a sudden, blinding pain shot through me. My muscles locked up, and the floor came up to smack me in the face. The last two things I saw before my vision faded to black were a light red line connecting itself from me to Reach, and the stun prod in Trevor's hand.

As far as I could tell, I wasn't out for long. When my eyes blinked open once more, my back was pressed against one of the supply pipes, with my arms stretched behind me and my wrists bound somehow to it. It felt like a length of chain binding me to it.

Trevor was talking. "See, I got them. I got them like you wanted. So you'll give it to me again, right? You swore, you swore you'd give it back."

"Uggnn... Trevor... moron..." I mumbled, shaking my head back and forth to clear the cobwebs clinging to my consciousness. "The fuck..."

A hand found my chin and tilted my head up so that I could see the balding man from earlier. "Good afternoon, dear. Are you all right?"

"Ya know, I've been better." I pulled at the chains binding my hands to the pipe behind me. "Where's Reach?"

"Mmm'over here." A voice mumbled from the next pipe over. I turned that way to see Cassie there, bound the same way I was.

Satisfied that she was at least as safe as I was (not much), I refocused my attention on my _**idiot**_ of a brother. "Trevor! Where's Battery? Where's Miss Militia? What the hell is going on?"

Trevor, standing back with one of the other men that I'd seen in the room, wouldn't look at me. He stared at the floor, muttering, "Shut up. Just shut up. I did what I had to do to survive. Teacher takes care of me."

The man in front of me straightened. "Please relax, dear. Straining against those bonds isn't going to do you any good. Nor will trying to assault any of us. We're going to have a little... discussion, about leaving this prison."

Beside me, Cassie gave a sharp laugh. "Right, bitch. Like they'll ever let you out of here."

"You'd be surprised what one can accomplish with the proper motivation." The man, Teacher apparently, intoned in a soft voice.

Clearly impatient, Trevor burst out, "Hey! You said if I got them here with you, you'd give me the power again. Come on, you fucking swore."

"Aww gee," Cassie muttered. "Did the sociopath in the Birdcage break a promise? If you can't trust the piece of shit super-criminal with a life sentence in the inescapable prison, who can you trust?"

"Indeed..." Teacher looked briefly annoyed at the interruption before stepping back. "And the power you will have, boy."

The power? My brother... Trevor had sold me out, had sold out heroes even if he didn't know who they were, for power? I knew he was trapped in here, with these vicious killers. I'd known that he could be selfish and obsessed with blaming everyone but himself for bad things that happened, but the idea that he could go this far, that he could do... this... I really... didn't know him.

_**He was a moron. **_

My confusion, and dawning realization that my brother really was _**that god damn stupid**_, was interrupted by Teacher's contemplative voice. "However, there is still more for you to fulfill your side."

"What?!" Trevor shouted. "No! No way! Look, they're right there! Our deal was that I help you get a face to face meeting. That's it."

"Yes." Teacher nodded. "A face-to-face meeting." He lifted a hand to point back to me. "That deal hasn't been filled yet.

My blood went cold, every instinct screaming at me to **get the fuck out of there.**

"Huh?" Trevor didn't get it.

Teacher smiled. "You see, dear Trevor, all of us..." He gestured at himself and his two silent companions. "... we've already been given the worst sentence the Protectorate can possibly give. We have no possibility of being... forgiven, as it were. But you... well, we need to be absolutely certain of your loyalty."

"What the hell does that mean?" My brother, the idiot, demanded. "You said get you a face-to-face meeting. There they are. There she is. You think they'll forgive that? Just give me the fucking power back already!"

"One more thing, boy." Teacher held up a finger patiently. "One more thing to _ensure_ that you are on our side, our team, forever, that you will never be accepted by their side. There is one more bridge for you to burn, a line for you to cross. Then you can have the power for as long as you want, any time you need it."

Trevor looked... hungry. He looked like an addict being promised a lifetime supply of his favorite vice. "What? What now?"

"You promised a face-to-face meeting." Teacher pointed at me. "Not Face-to-Mask. Cross the last line, my boy. If you take her mask, if you expose her identity, you will never be forgiven. You will have no choice but to stay with us, no choice but to be _loyal._ Then, _**then **_we will trust you. Then you can have all the power you want."

"Take her mask, and I will provide anything you want, for the rest of your life."

**13.04**

"What... why do you need to see her face?" Trevor sounded almost like he was stalling, unable to make a decision. "What's that gonna do?"

"On its own, nothing." Teacher shook his head, lifting a hand to pass something to my brother. "But you will take this camera, and photograph the evidence."

"Huh?" Trevor's hand took the camera, staring at it. "Where the hell did you get a camera?"

Teacher chuckled low. "As I told you before, Trevor, I have a contact whose power allows him ways of getting items in and out of this prison. Did you doubt me?"

"N-no." Trevor shook his head. I saw him turning the camera over in his hand.

"There are favors this contact still owes me, favors he will comply with. One of those, will be to take that picture to a safe location, to be released should... Tether... here, fail to follow future instructions. Or, of course, in the case that anything should happen to... let's say either of us. I'll extend the protection to you, of course."

"Hey ass-breath," Reach's voice cut in as Trevor stood there indecisively. "You come near either of us, and I'm gonna make that head up your ass not quite so idiomatic."

"Oh yeah," Trevor shot back, his hand tightening on the camera. "I'm so scared of some little girl chained to a pipe."

"As a point of fact, dear, you will find yourself quite unable to use your power." Teacher idly remarked toward Reach. He gestured toward the man who had been hovering just at the edge of my line of sight, over near Cassie.

"You see," Teacher explained, as though he was lecturing a class. "Void here projects a field around himself that is incapable of being affected or penetrated by any parahuman power. With my help, he is able to project that protection onto the person he is nearest, which... in your case, prevents you from accessing your power whatsoever."

None of that it mattered to me, at the time. I was still frozen in disbelief, trying in vain to understand what was going on. What... what had happened? Was my brother always this stupid, always this... bad? I'd known that he had a tendency to blame other people for his problems, or just wait for them to be solved rather than doing anything about it, but this was... he was helping a villain, a sociopath, attack a hero. Whether he knew it was me or not was immaterial. _**He was helping a villain. **_

Not only helping, but actually considering breaking one of the most important unwritten rules. In the same way, or even more than, the fact that killing a police officer was generally a bad idea because doing so would bring absolutely all of the ones that were left down on your head, unwillingly unmasking a cape this way was... unforgivable.

He wouldn't do it. My brother had his problems, but _he would not do this._

I believed that. I **had** to believe that. My parents, _our_ parents, were dead. They were gone. I had no other family. Trevor, for all his faults, was what I had left. He would not go that far. He couldn't.

He took a step toward me, then another.

I didn't pay attention to anything else. My eyes were on Trevor, as he crossed the distance between us. I watched him approach, and I believed. I knew he would stop. My brother was not this person. I didn't need to fight him. When he changed his mind, I would have to be ready to protect him from Teacher's reprisal.

He would change his mind. I believed him. I knew my brother.

Still, I jerked a little at the chains that bound my arms back, truly noticing only then that my feet were also secured to either side of the pipe, preventing me from kicking out.

Teacher's voice was calm, the soothing, guiding voice of a kindly, knowledgeable professor. "The sooner we can trust you, Trevor, the sooner you can have your power back."

I shook my head. "Don't. You don't have to do this. You're better than this."

"She's right, Trevor." That voice oh-so-gently assured him. "You are better than this. You are better when you have power. You know why you need it. We understand. How could someone like her know what you've been through?"

Trevor stopped in front of me, hands twitching at his sides. He glanced over his shoulder at Teacher, who gave him a reassuring smile. "It's all right, Trevor. You can do it."

"Don't." I said quietly, head shaking as I stared up at him. He knew better. He _was better_. When the time came, when he stopped, when he turned against Teacher, I had to be ready.

He spoke to me. "I want you to know, that I don't... I don't have anything against you. I really don't. This isn't about you. It's not... it's about me, it's about doing what I have to do. I wish it wasn't you. Actually, I... I think you're funny, and... and cute."

I had thought that I couldn't be more sickened by this entire situation. I had been wrong. Not only because he was my brother and the idea of him finding any part of me 'cute' in _**that**_ way was revolting, but also because that was gross even if I had been someone he'd never seen before. I was strapped to a pipe, and if he went through with this, he was going to take my mask, expose my face in front of several of the worst villains in the world. But it _wasn't personal? _But he _thought I was cute?_ What part of... of that was supposed to make any of this better?

He was gross. But he was my brother. He would stop. I knew that he would, and I was ready to protect him when Teacher inevitably lashed out. I was ready.

His hand came up, fingers twitching. I felt him push the hood back out of the way a little awkwardly. "I... like I said, nothing personal. You're... you're a good hero." His hand came down on the top of my head, resting against my mask. I could feel it shaking nervously.

"Don't." I swallowed, shaking my head as I clung to my belief in my brother, in the only real family that I had left. "Don't do this, Trevor. You don't need his power. He's using you. Don't let him. This is your life, _**your life**_. We're getting you out of here. We are getting out of here. You're not the person he wants you to be."

Trevor's eyes closed and he looked away for a moment. I tensed. This was it. This was the part where he would change his mind, where he would be the person I knew he was.

Instead, I felt his hand move, his fingers squeezing into the material of the mask. Then it was sliding up, my vision obscured by the fabric as it was pulled up. My neck was uncovered, the air of the room even cooler than I had expected. The mask drew inexorably upward, exposing my chin, then my mouth.

The pulling stopped then, Trevor's hand moving away from my head. I couldn't see anything, but the mask still covered half my face.

Everything was still. All was quiet. I trusted Trevor. He was better than this. He stopped. He had stopped before he went too far. He'd almost done it, but now Teacher would be angry, and-

There was a deep exhale of commitment, and the hand came back. The fabric of the mask was gathered up once more.

"No." I whispered, my voice no longer disguised, yet too quiet and suddenly emotional to be recognized anyway. My trust in my brother. I clung to it for one last, pitiful, desperate second. Yes, I might have been able to stop this before. I might have been able to fight back, even bound as I was. Maybe we would have lost, but I could have fought.

But I'd trusted my brother. I'd _**believed **_that I had to worry about protecting him after he did the right thing, not believing that he would ever actually follow through with this.

Now, it was too late. Now, all I could do was whisper, "Please."

With a rush of fabric, the mask left my head entirely, followed immediately by the camera flash before Trevor could possibly have recognized who he was looking at. At the same time, my faith in family, my trust in the inevitable goodness of my admittedly flawed brother, shattered.

My parents had been killed, but my brother had become something I couldn't recognize. He had been willing to unmask and blackmail a... a hero, to get what he wanted. It didn't _matter_ that he hadn't known who I was. The fact that he could do that, that he was willing to go that far...

The betrayal, the absolute loss that was almost as powerful as that of the death of my parents, yet for entirely different reasons, twisted up in my gut, but I forced it aside. I _**forced**_ myself to prioritize, just for a few more minutes. I shut the feeling down, and I focused on the person in front of me not as being my brother, not as someone I needed to protect, but as an enemy.

And enemies... I could deal with.

With the mask gone, I could see again. I saw Trevor holding the crumpled mask in one hand and the camera in the other, staring at me with some mixture of disbelief and shock. His mouth was open, but his voice seemed to have failed him. His eyes moved from the costume to my face, as though trying to associate what he had seen before with what he was seeing now, while a noise that was something like denial and horror gradually rose from him.

"N-no." He spoke finally, his voice shaken. "Ma-"

That was as far as I let him get. Attaching a line to his shirt, I yanked him forward toward me and down. As he stumbled, I lashed forward, smacking Trevor in the face with the top of my head. I felt blood in my hair, and a sharp pain of my own even as he cried out.

One line attached to the camera in his hand, yanking it out of his hand to slam into the nearby wall with as much force as I could muster. Meanwhile, a second attached between Trevor's side as he recoiled from the blow, and the wall behind him. A violent _**shove **_at the line sent him flying toward my companion. "Reach!"

Teacher was moving back, retreating from the room even as he shouted an order. But I still heard a satisfying crash and two different cries as Trevor's flight sent him slamming into the man that had been guarding Reach.

The man who had been by Teacher took a step forward, and then there were two of him, another step and there were three of him. With each step, another duplicate was created, all of them rushing toward us.

Meanwhile, the chains attached to Reach snapped as easily as if she had been breaking a carrot in two. Since Trevor was now the person nearest Void, she had her power back.

With a terrible, loud grinding and tearing noise, the pipe that she had been bound to literally ripped its way out of the ceiling and floor. "You wanna play?" The pipe flipped over horizontally to take up most of the width of the room, before flying forward to catch the approaching duplicates, bowling them all over. "Then let's fucking play!"

While the duplicates were busy with the pipe, Reach spared a moment to reach over. Her hand brushed the chains attached to my arms and legs, snapping them as easily as she had her own.

Void was trying to shove Trevor away from him so that he could get near Reach again. But she floated the chains that had been binding her up and over, quickly wrapping them around both of their arms to trap them together.

I took three steps that way, while my companion continued to use the flying pipe to mow down any of the duplicates that started to rise.

Twisting around, pulling against the chain binding his arm to the other man's, Trevor stared at me. His eyes were still wide with shock, blood from the blow I had already done to his nose obscuring his features. "M-Mad-"

I punched him then, a hard right hook with my gauntlet that knocked him into the wall, dragging the other man with him, before he slumped with a dazed groan.

Reaching out, I took my mask back from his hand, holding it tightly in my own. Then, for a moment, I just stood there and stared down at him as he whimpered in pain.

To anyone else, I would have had a pithy remark. I would have insulted them, pointed out every way that he had just failed. I would have told him how much his choice had fucked him over, in every possible way.

But he was my brother, and he had done this, and I wasn't in the mood to be funny.

"... didn't... know... it... you..." Trevor was trying to stammer, spitting blood out of his mouth. I saw a couple of his teeth missing.

"No," I said coldly. "I'm the one who didn't know you."

I turned my back on him. I turned my back on my brother, and pulled the mask on while calling out to my teammate. "Reach!"

The pipe snapped just then, after a particularly vicious smack-down. She winced and looked back at me. "Time to go?"

I nodded, moving to her. Meanwhile, the collection of duplicates were picking themselves up. Apparently it took more than a severe beating with a giant pipe to put them down.

Looking past the duplicates, to the corridor that Teacher had escaped into, I attached a pair of lines there from myself and Reach, using them to haul the two of us clear across the room and out into the hallway.

We landed, steadying ourselves. I saw the small army of duplicates come rushing for the door, then turned the other way and started to run with Cassie.

The duplicates weren't just tough. They were also fast. They came after us like a flood, filling up the corridor behind us while they strained to catch up.

As we came around the corner, I almost slammed into someone, jerking aside at the last second to hit the wall. Beside me, Reach threw herself the other way, into the opposite wall.

It was Ruin, the girl who had been guarding the entrance into the female side of the prison. She blinked at both of us, stared at our panting forms, and then looked up as the flood of duplicates came rushing into view.

They stopped, all at once. For a second, Ruin and the nearly thirty duplicates stood facing one another. No one moved, no one spoke.

The momentary spell broke, and the identical minions swarmed forward, trying to overtake us as they let out a single loud, intimidating scream of challenge.

Ruin, on the other hand, simply took one step forward to put myself and Reach behind her, and spoke a single word, her voice soft and somewhat strained from obvious lack of use.

"No."

Some kind of hazy, semi-invisible wave, a distortion in the air, accompanied that single word, flooding out into the hall in front of the girl. It passed through the crowd of rushing duplicates. It hit all of them, passing through each, and as it did, every single body in its path instantly turned onyx black, looking briefly like a statue, before falling apart into what looked like ash, which then, in turn, dissolved into nothing but a few grains of dust.

A single word, and all of the duplicates were gone.

Turning back toward us, Ruin silently leaned forward, eyebrow raised as she pantomimed concern, gesturing to see if we were okay.

"We're good, thanks." Reach spoke for us. "Think you could uhhh, help us find Glaistig Uaine's place now? We sort of got... sidetracked by those guys."

Giving a short nod, Ruin pointed back the way she had been coming from.

Before we moved, Cassie stepped near me. "Hey, uh, we could... go back for him first. We can go back for that piece of garbage if you... you know... want to."

"No." I shook my head, starting to walk the way that Ruin had pointed. "He made his choice."

I was glad that I had my mask back. Not just to hide my identity, but because it prevented anyone from seeing the tears that still blurred my vision and were wet against my cheeks. It allowed me to pretend that I had moved on, that I didn't feel broken... sick... violated inside.

My parents had been killed more than a month earlier.

And now my brother was gone as well.

**13.05**

Before we went very far, I reached out to tug Ruin's sleeve. "Teacher's the one who attacked us. He's got... a couple of people with him. If you send word to the exit, they might be able to stop him from getting out, if he hasn't already."

She looked past us, down the corridor toward where the split between the male and female sides of the prison was. Then she turned to point down the hall the way we had been going. Making sure we were paying attention, Ruin pointed at the nearest doorway, then held up four fingers.

"Keep going until we reach the fourth entrance, got it." I nodded. "Go warn them at the guard post."

She left, and the two of us followed her instructions, eventually reaching a prison block that was somehow even more well ordered than Marquis' had been. As we entered, I saw a whiteboard next to the entrance with a list of names down one side. Next to each name was a listed chore like 'mop showers', 'sweep ramp', and 'trash collection'. Beside the list of chores there was line along the top listing the days of the week, with check marks next to each chore down the line of names for every day that had passed except for this one, which was roughly half full of check marks.

There were some women by the televisions, watching daytime soaps and talk shows, while others did chores, and a few more sat at tables playing card games.

I had time to let my gaze pass over all of this, before a voice called out in some other language. I thought it sounded like Chinese, but I was hardly an expert. When I turned toward the voice, there were two women there, and they couldn't look any more different. The one who had spoken was a small Asian female, who looked like she was about thirty, maybe thirty-five years old. Meanwhile, her companion was a tall Caucasian woman with long blonde hair. She appeared to be ten years younger than the Asian woman, and she might have been pretty, except for a thick burn scar that ran from her left eye all the way down to her neck, wide enough to take up half her face on that side.

When the blonde woman spoke, it was in English. Heavily southern accented English. "Weeeelll weeeeeelll weeeeeellll. What have we here? Could it be, by my very stars, _**another**_ hero, come to grace our presence? If I didn't know better, I'd say the people in charge up there could be losing control of this here establishment."

The Asian woman said something else, and her companion chuckled. "When you's right, you's right." Taking a step toward us, the blonde held her hand out. "My... paramour here has reminded me that it's darn right impolite not to introduce ourselves. They call me Vex. My... inamorato here-"

"Inamorata." Cassie interrupted.

"I beg your pardon?"

Speaking slower, Cassie sounded it out. "In-am-uh-rah-tuh. Not toh. Unless your friend there's packing a cock, anyway."

Vex seemed to consider that for a moment, before her smile widened. "Well then, I suppose one learns something new every day, ain't that right? My... inamorata here... is called Bashe."

She continued to hold her hand out, but Ruin had arrived by then, and moved between us. She gave the other two prisoners a harsh look, glaring for a moment until Vex finally lowered hand, chuckling the whole time. "Aight, I can see when being friendly ain't wanted." She looked over Ruin's shoulder at me. "I'll be keeping an out for ya at dinner."

They moved on, and I looked at Ruin. "There's a reason you didn't want us to shake her hand, isn't there?" When the other girl nodded, I asked, "Her power?" Another nod. "Thank you. Did you catch Teacher before he got back across?" Her head shook that time, and I winced. "Did he hurt anyone?"

Before she could respond, I heard another voice, this one familiar. "Tether?"

Turning on my heel, I saw Sam. She had some kind of white cloth wrapped around the bottom half of her face, similar to Miss Militia's American flag scarf.

Regret filled her eyes when I looked at her. "Oh Tether, You made-"

That was as far as I let her get, as far as she was _**able **_to get, before I threw myself that way. My arms went around Sam, and I clung to her as tightly as I could. "You're okay. You're okay, you're okay, you're okay, you're okay." It was a mantra, and I squeezed tighter with each repetition.

"Wha—oh." Poor Sam seemed taken aback briefly, but after a moment she returned the hug almost as fiercely. "Hey, hey, I'm fine, I promise."

"You're alive." I squeezed my eyes shut and tightened the hug even more. "You're all right, you're safe." I had to keep saying it, to remind myself that it was real, that it was true. Knowing that Trevor had betrayed Reach and me, and not knowing where Battery or Miss Militia were post-betrayal, had given rise to some truly terrifying thoughts that I hadn't really let myself consciously acknowledge until now, when they were thankfully erased by the very sight of my guardian.

"Uuullp-" Sam managed to get out. "I don't know about safe, someone's trying to strangle me to death right now."

Realizing I had been squeezing a little _too_ tight, I finally let up a little, and allowed Sam to extricate herself. She stood there, staring down at me. Concern filled her eyes. "Hey... hey, are you all right? What happened?" Even through my mask, she knew something was wrong. It might have had something to do with the fact that I still hadn't fully let her go.

"I..." My eyes closed again, and I gave the slightest shudder. "I don't want to talk about it right here."

She frowned slightly at that, and I saw the worry in her eyes before she looked past me. "This is... Reach?"

"How'd you know?" Cassie asked, curiously.

"Dragon's been sending messages when she can. She let us know you two were in here." Battery's eyebrow raised. "But why are you wearing a different costume?"

"Uh, long story." I shook my head. "Can we go somewhere? Where's Miss Militia?"

Before she could respond to that, Sam's eyes caught sight of something else past us. She stepped back, lifting a hand to gesture. "Your Highness."

Confused briefly, I turned to find what looked like a girl even younger than I was. She stood a few feet away, the details of her face obscured by the shroud made of shredded prison sweats.

"Faerie Queen," Sam introduced us to Glaistig Uaine. "This is-"

"True Healer." When the so-called Faerie Queen spoke, her own voice accompanied by a choir of others, all speaking in unison. "The sleepers celebrate your arrival."

"Uhh..." I blinked a few times. "Miss... ummm, your Highness, I... don't know what anyone's told you about me, but I'm not a healer. I-"

"What you are capable of, and what you are aware of, so seldom coincide." Glaistig Uaine seemed to float forward, her small hand coming up to touch the chest of my costume, where my heart was. I felt Sam tense a little next to me at the approach, but she remained still.

I hesitated before looking down a little at the hand pressed against my heart. "I—errr... I'm sorry, Faerie Queen, it's... been a really long day. I just... I don't mean to insult you, I just don't understand. Are you saying that you think I can learn how to heal people?"

A low, almost musical chuckle came then. "Isn't it amusing," she began. "How the bird that soars through the air, fails to recognize the basic miracle in what it has accomplished?"

"I... I suppose it is easy to dismiss or overlook miracles in the age we're living in now." I conceded.

Her hand slowly fell away from my chest, and she looked curious. "What do you know of the Moirai?"

The question made me blink, uncertain. "The... the Moirai? Those little gremlin things?"

Somewhere behind me, Cassie snorted. "Those are Mogwai. The Moirai are the Fates from Greek Mythology. You know, the three sisters who dictate destiny?"

The strange, shrouded girl looked pleased. "Indeed. The three sisters. One who spins the thread of life, the one who measures it out, and the one who snips the thread."

"What... what does that have to do with me, Faerie Queen?"

I saw that faint smile return. "Just as Fate required three, so too do the Sleeping Fae need three before the awakening begins, and the Great Beast is gathered. Three are needed. One, the Reaper Queen, to keep the Sleepers safe, to guide them under her cloak when they have fallen. The second, the Administrator, to provide guidance and leadership through their confusion."

Again, her hand came up to touch my chest. "The third, the Healer, to ease their pain, to set right what was done in the name of tests. The dreams of the Fae are restless, needlessly provoked to conflict and ire. The True Healer is not one who knits the flesh, but who erases this needless burden."

"The Fae are driven to conflict, to war and bloodshed. Only the True Healer may prevent this, by easing the dreams of the Sleepers, to settle them so that they might be gathered for the full awakening, and the Great Beast's return. The Reaper gathers, the Administrator guides, and the Healer sets right."

I had no idea how to respond to that. "Uhh... I..."

"In time, you may understand." Glaistig Uaine raised her chin curiously. "But whispers had reached me of a gift for my acceptance of you and your companion."

Flinching at the reminder, I nodded. "I'm sorry, your Highness. I.. the gift was stolen, when Teacher and his... companions ambushed us. We escaped, with help from Ruin, but... we weren't able to retrieve the gift."

The amusement left that deceptively young-looking face, while that chorus of voices intoned dangerously, "Teacher has stolen a gift meant for the Queen Reaper of the Faerie?"

"I'm really sorry." I shrugged helplessly. "He wasn't trying to get the box, I don't think. He was trying to... well, it's a long story. But he and..." I trailed off, swallowing. "He, a couple of his men, and... Trevor, the normal boy that was stuck here, trapped us."

"Trevor?" Sam suddenly blurted, speaking up for the first time as she stepped around to see me. "He... he helped trap you?"

"And more." I muttered darkly. "He made his choice. Teacher wanted him to take my mask away, to take my picture so that he could blackmail me into doing something for him. Trevor did it, just to get some kind of power for himself or something."

I saw anger then, in not only Sam and Glaistig Uaine's faces, but in Ruin's as well, before the latter girl turned and stepped away.

"This betrayal will not go unanswered." The Faerie Queen vowed. "His regrets will tear their way from his throat as he begs forgiveness that will not come."

Swallowing, I spoke up after a momentary hesitation. "Your Highness, would you, please... don't hurt Trevor too much. He's..." I paused before giving up on any kind of lie or misinformation. "He's my-"

"Brother," she finished for me. "Indeed, I know of the relation. I will not enact vengeance upon the brother of the True Healer, no matter his crimes, if you do not wish it."

"I don't want him to die." My voice was soft, and I sighed slowly. "I just want... I don't know what I want. And I know I can't stop you from doing anything you like. But please don't kill him."

"As promised, Healer, I will not kill your brother, though he may live to regret his decision."

I couldn't respond to that, other than to nod.

"Faerie Queen," Battery spoke up. "Do you mind if I take these two back to see our other friend?"

"Go." The shrouded girl bowed her head in acknowledgment. "We will speak soon, as I... decide upon the proper response to Teacher's treachery." Gesturing to Ruin, she added, "Go with them, Minstrel. Protect the Healer and others from any interruption."

The half-Asian girl looked hesitant, but she nodded after only a short pause and began to walk ahead of us, moving toward another door on the far end of the U-shaped cell block.

Sam walked next to me, putting an arm around my shoulders as we moved. "Trevor?" She asked in a low, pained voice. "Was that what really happened?"

My eyes closed briefly, the tears threatening to come back. "He did it. He knew what Teacher wanted to do... what he was threatening to do, and he... " I swallowed past the thick lump in my throat. "He chose to do it. He unmasked me. He took the picture. He was going to give it to Teacher. He was going to let Teacher know... know who I... I..."

We were in the hallway by then, and I stopped walking. My hands scrambled at my mask and I tore it off myself this time, eyes flooding with tears as I suddenly turned to latch onto Sam tightly. She gasped in surprise, but held me as I cried.

Once I started, I just couldn't stop. My face buried itself against her shoulder and I wept, shoulders shaking violently as all of my emotions poured out of me. I clung to Sam, a buoy against the tumultuous flood of tears.

It was some time before I managed to get the words out, some sort of explanation for why this had affected me so much. "He... when... the last time..." I shuddered heavily. "The... last time a villain knew my identity... found out who I was... he... m-my..."

"Your parents." Sam breathed out, realizing what I was saying. Her arms tightened around me. "The last time a bad guy knew who you were, they killed your parents. And... now your brother was giving him the same information, knowing exactly how he planned to use it."

I still couldn't see through the tears, and my head shook slowly. "It doesn't matter that he didn't know who I was when he did it. Teacher... Teacher's as bad as Coil. He... he said he was going to threaten me, to make me do what he wanted... Even if Tre-Trevor didn't know who I was, he knew what Teacher was going to do. He knew that... that someone's... familiy was going to be... threatened or... or killed, and... and he still... he chose... " My eyes squeezed even more tightly shut, and my shoulders shook while I clung to Sam. Finally, I muttered, "I'm not better than him."

"What?" Sam leaned back and looked down at me.

"I said I'm not..." I swallowed. "I'm not better than him. Maybe I'm worse. I... helped bully a girl to death. Disagreeing with the last thing, that doesn't matter. I didn't stop it. I didn't... I helped torture her for so long. I did everything to her. I chose that. I... chose to hurt her to make myself feel better. The only difference between Trevor and me is that... is that Taylor died."

"And you changed." Sam said gently. "You chose to change, to become a better person. You _**are**_ a better person than you were, Maddy."

I shook my head then, slumping backwards while wrapping my arms around myself. "Why? Why would he do this? He had to have a reason, didn't he? He had to... to have _some _reason to choose... to choose to do something like this. I don't think he even knows that Mom and Dad are... are gone. I don't think he knows that. So why would he give up so much? Why would he help Teacher? Is that power the only thing he cares about?"

Before Battery could respond, I felt a gently brush against my shoulder. When I turned, I found Ruin standing there, looking horrified. Slowly, she raised a hand, holding a small notebook. On the paper there, she had scrawled four words. _He was helping me. _

The words took a moment to penetrate. I stared uncomprehendingly. "Huh? What... what do you mean?"

Turning the pad back to herself, Ruin scribbled on the next page, then the one after it, and then a third before finally showing us what she had written on the first page. _Tinker-power focuses on solving/helping cape problems. _A flip of the paper revealed the next page. _He was building something to block my power so I won't use it accidentally. _The third page was uncovered then. _Didn't have time before the power ran out. He thought he could finish if he had the power one more time. _

"You let Teacher in?" I asked, staring the paper. "So that Trevor could talk to him and get the power back?"

To that, Ruin's head shook violently. She scribbled on the paper, writing out, _I told him no. Wouldn't listen._ The word no was underlined several times. Then she added, _Teacher's power addictive. Hard to say no even without good reason._

My brother... he'd been trying to help Ruin. Misguided, flawed, and it was still a horrible thing to do to a hero, and **beyond**idiotic to trust Teacher, whatever his reason, but _**he'd had a reason**_.

Before I could even begin to react to this emotional whiplash, the lights went out. They came back on a second later, only to go out again for a few seconds before coming back once more.

"What the-" Sam started.

Before she could get any further, Teacher's voice emerged from the walls, echoing up and down the corridor. "_Good afternoon, fellow detainees of this not-so-illustrious resort. What you have just witnessed was the eviction of our former Warden from the computer systems of this facility." _

"_To those who doubt this, let darkness reign..." _The corridor went dark again, before the lights returned a solid ten seconds later. "_And now let there be light. Let the air stop." _The sudden silence where once had been the constant white noise of the air conditioners was conspicuous. "_And now you may breathe." _The air conditioning returned.

"_We, my people, control every system within this facility. But we shall remain benevolent gods to those who do not __**make**__themselves our enemies. However, should any insist on pursuing that... mistake, their block will be vented to the vacuum that surrounds the facility, and sealed off." _

My mouth fell open, as I stood there with my mask in one hand. My head shook slowly. "No way the Faerie Queen's going to let him have that kind of power."

"Neither will Marquis." Reach observed. "He's slapping them both in the face with this move. Hell, doing this really fucks over Marquis' whole plan to put _himself_ ahead."

Sam was shaking her head, the impact just hitting her. "You know what this means?"

"Yeah," I took in a breath and then let it out.

"It means the Birdcage is about to be a warzone."

**Interlude 13 – PHO/Laserdream**

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►**Topic: Protectorate East North East (Thread 14) In: Boards ► Places ► America ► Brockton Bay Discussion ► Heroes**

**Momma Bear **(Global Moderator) (Original Poster)

Posted on August 18th, 2010:

Use this topic to continue the discussion about the East-North-East Division of the Protectorate, also known as Brockton Bay Protectorate.

Please remember to stay on topic, and respect the opinions of your fellow posters.

The current ENE Protectorate membership (_updated as of June 1st, 2011)_ consists of:

_**Armsmaster (Leader)**_ – Tinker utilizing halberd and body armor.

_**Assault **_– Redirects and manipulates kinetic energy in relation to himself.

_**Battery **_– Enhanced speed/strength/etc based around taking the time to 'charge up'. Also possesses a minor electromagnetic power.

_**Penance **_– Flight and projection of kinetically-charged light.

_**Manpower **_– Enhanced strength and durability

_**Laserdream **_– Flight, laser projection, minor forcefield creation.

**(Showing Page 312 of 312)**

►**Inquisitive**

replied on June 25th, 2011:

Did... that seriously just happen?

►**Kingsbolt**

replied on June 25th, 2011:

Inquisitive

? Did what just happen?

►**Inquisitive**

replied on June 25th, 2011:

Kingsbolt

It keeps going on and off of youtube. Search for 'Assault punches Armsmaster' and maybe you'll get lucky.

_Edit: _Found a working link here. Get it fast.

► **HFDMan**

replied on June 25th, 2011:

HOLY SHIT.

Welp, he's off the team. Wtf do you think caused it?

More importantly, how long do you think it'll be before someone remixes that punch to a song?

►**Gorilla Manilla**

replied on June 25th, 2011:

HFDMan

What do you mean 'how long'? Would you prefer Thunderstruck remix or Mama Said Knock You Out? Those are just two I found in five minutes of looking.

► **HFDMan**

replied on June 25th, 2011:

lmao, that second one is pretty well done. "Mama said-" POP! Down goes Armsmaster.

But uhh, guys, it doesn't look like Assault's alone. According to my buddy who works at the Protectorate building (can't say doing what or they'll lose their job), Laserdream and Penance walked out too. What the hell is going on over there?

►**VisualFirebird**

replied on June 25th, 2011:

HFDMan

There was another video earlier from a different angle that showed those two, but it's gone now and you can't see them from the angle the current video's got. They were definitely there and they definitely walked out with Assault after he clocked Armsmaster.

►**Day_hunter**

replied on June 25th, 2011:

Soooo what about Battery? I mean, she and Assault are totally... engaged in relations, right? Ooh, you think that whole punch thing was because Armsmaster and Battery had an affair?

_Edit: _Come to think of it, has anyone seen Battery in the last few days?

►**Laserdream **(Verified Cape)

replied on June 25th, 2011:

Please don't spread rumors about my teammates like that. No one had an affair. This isn't a soap opera. There was a disagreement, and Assault lost his temper. All I can say at the moment is that there's a lot of very personal things going on, but we're handling them as best as we can. Please be patient with us and wait for more information.

►**Feralness**

replied on June 25th, 2011:

Will you be quitting the Protectorate over it? What about your father?

►**Laserdream **(Verified Cape)

replied on June 25th, 2011:

No one has quit anything yet. My father is quite happy where he is. My choices, whatever they might be, don't influence his. We aren't attached at the hip.

Seriously guys, just hold off on all the conclusion-leaping. We're going to work things out as well as we can, but that becomes harder when people who aren't involved have already played judge and jury with the entire situation so much that the general public thinks that everything is said and done already.

►**HizKat**

replied on June 25th, 2011:

This absolutely has something to do with Battery. I did some checking, and she hasn't been seen in the last several days. I'm telling you, something happened to her, the Protectorate is trying to cover it up, and now Assault, Laserdream, and Penance are pissed off about it, but still trying to play nice in public.

►**Ficsy**

replied on June 25th, 2011

Laserdream has a point. Everyone needs to stop jumping to conclusions and let them work this out on their own. The Protectorate is just like any other workplace. Sometimes people lose their tempers. Let's just wait and see what comes of this little spat.

**End of Page.****1 - 310****, ****311****, 312**

**Private message from Shielder **(Verified Cape)

**Shielder: **(Verified Cape)(Received June 10th, 2011 - Opened June 10th, 2011) Did Dad ask you about coming out here Independence Day?

**Laserdream: **(Verified Cape) (Sent June 10th, 2011) Yeah, he mentioned it. I wouldn't miss it. You trying to barbeque? ) It'll be the first time we have Chinese for Fourth of July dinner. And I shall laaaaaaugh at you.

**Shielder: **(Verified Cape) (Received June 10th, 2011 - Opened June 10th, 2011) Jerk. Just for that, I'm totally inviting that Antony dude that has your poster in his dorm.

**Laserdream: **(Verified Cape) (Sent June 10th, 2011) Don't you dare. It'll just encourage mom to go on again about why don't I have a boyfriend.

**Shielder: **(Verified Cape) (Received June 25th, 2011 - Opened June 25th, 2011) Crystal? I tried calling you, but there was no answer. What's going on over there?

**Laserdream: **(Verified Cape) (Sent June 25th, 2011) I'll call you back in about an hour, sorry. Been dealing with a lot. Shouldn't talk about it over a message board system.

►**Topic: Psycho Bug Girl ► Places ► America ► Brockton Bay Discussion**

►**In Quartata (Original Poster)**

Posted on May 15th, 2011

I wasn't sure exactly where to put this, but it sounds like there's a new... vigilante (maybe?) running around killing gang members here in Brockton Bay. A friend of a friend told me that she knows a dozen different Merchants that just disappeared. No body, no nothing.

Apparently there's rumors going around calling the cape 'psycho bug girl' (Totally not a lasting name). They're saying that this girl splits into bugs, like... an entire swarm, and that she's been killing and eating (yes, eating) gang members that she finds on the streets.

_Edit: _After a lot of misinformation and confusion, we've now at least tentatively confirmed that 'psycho bug girl', whatever she calls herself, isn't targeting civilians. It looks like only gang members have to worry about getting -dons sunglasses- swarmed.

_Edit 2: _According to multiple sources, there's more than one 'Psycho Bug Girl', all with similar powers. A cult, maybe?

**(Showing Page 72 of 72)**

►**Bratwurst Salesman**

Replied on June 17th, 2011:

MissingYou

For the last time, just because the bodies disappear doesn't mean she EATS THEM. That's stupid and gross. Why does cleaning up the streets have to mean that she's a cannibal?

►**edckdm **(Verified PCIPS Agent)

Replied on June 17th, 2011:

We have no evidence that any cannibalism is taking place in Brockton Bay, I promise. That said, what this individual (Or individuals) are doing is _**wrong.**_ She or they are taking the law entirely into their own hands, playing judge, jury, and executioner in a way that endangers the continued effectiveness of the entire parahuman law enforcement division. Unless a kill order has been put out on any of these individuals, **intentional** lethal force is absolutely wrong.

We're going to track her/them down, and when we do, you'll all see that this is just another cape with a creepy-seeming power and a chip on their shoulder.

►**LogicalKismetHater**

Replied on June 19th, 2011:

What I want to know is, why does anyone want to stop her? She's done more to clean up the streets and get rid of these damn drug pushers in the last month than anyone else has in YEARS.

►**Metallica999**

Replied on June 20th, 2011:

They're (I'm telling you, it's more than one person) killing people. A lot of people. All without trial. Does that sound right to you?

►**LogicalKismetHater**

Replied on June 20th, 2011:

When they happen to be piece of shit drug dealers that push their garbage onto kids? Hell yeah I think that's right. Take 'em all out, Psycho Bug Girl. We're rooting for you.

►**FitnessFit**

Replied on June 22nd, 2011:

Well, I'm with Logical. Anyone that gets more Merchants off the streets and frees up our Protectorate to deal with the real threats is okay by me.

►**Hel's Jester**

Replied on June 24th, 2011:

Holy shit, guys. A friend of mine was **(Post edited by moderator – please do not admit to criminal activity either by yourself or people you know – Momma Bear) **and she says that one of the Bug Girls just killed Trainwreck AND Mush! Apparently the Merchants were trying to set an ambush for the Bug Girls and it backfired **BADLY.**

►**FitnessFit**

Replied on June 24th, 2011:

Seriously? Good! Go Bug Girl! Now take out those pieces of shit Skidmark and Squealer and then maybe the rest of the god damn drug pushers will take a hint.

►**Bratwurst Salesman **

Replied on June 25th, 2011

Wow, the Merchants just couldn't catch a break last night. First Trainwreck and Mush get taken out by Bug Girl, then Laserdream takes down Squealer.

►**HizKat**

Replied on June 25th, 2011:

Oh my god, you guys. What if the Bug Girl Cult has something to do with Battery being missing, and the Protectorate is trying to cover it up so we don't panic, and that's why Assault's all pissed off?

**End of Page. ****1****-****70****, ****71****, 72**

**Chatter-Safe Messenger Log – Conversation with TAnders (June 25th, 2011)**

_CPelham – _Squealer's definitely going away for awhile. Are you sure you're going to be okay?

_TAnders – _I'm okay, really. I shouldn't have gone out by myself. It's my fault you had to come save me.

_CPelham – _Don't say that. You were upset about Cassie. Anyone would have run off.

_TAnders – _Most people wouldn't have run straight into the Merchants.

_CPelham –_ It all worked out. Hell, you helped grab Squealer. You've got reward money coming.

_TAnders – _I'd rather know Cassie was safe.

_CPelham – _Hey, she's going to be all right. She's with Tether and Battery. They'll be okay.

_TAnders – _Thanks, Crystal. You really don't have to waste your time with me.

_CPelham – _It's not a waste of time. Actually, speaking of last night, you don't have to be rescued anymore. )

_TAnders – _I guess not. I hope it helps the others somehow.

_CPelham _– Have you started building anything yet? ;) Kid Win said when he first triggered, he couldn't sleep until he tried three different things.

_TAnders – _Sort of. I have this idea for quick response drones that could deploy to any location in the city as soon as someone calls 911. If they work the way they do in my head, they could carry medical supplies and perform or assist in basic first aid, as well as provide a full medical scan for the paramedics when they show up. Then I have this other idea for these fire suppression balls.

_CPelham –_ Those sound great, Theo! You should talk to Kid Win. I'll get his number to you.

_TAnders – _That's what my step-mother said. But none of it helps get the others back.

_CPelham – _We'll get them back, Theo, I promise.

_TAnders –_ gtg, Aster's crying.

Leaning away from the computer after Theo excused himself, Crystal let out a long sigh while glancing around the fairly spartan studio apartment. Her furniture consisted of a card table where her laptop was positioned, the chair she was sitting in, a futon that was currently occupied, a small bookcase loaded with her novels, and an old television that was currently muted, showing images of some kind of fire that the new Maine Protectorate was dealing with.

While she was gazing at the kitchen, trying to remember if she still had those frozen fishsticks, her phone buzzed from where it was lying next to her computer. Snatching it up, she glanced at the name before answering with, "Kayden? Did you hear anything?"

The former villain sounded tired. "Nothing new. Colin insists that the higher-ups know what they're doing and that we should just wait for news and let them do their jobs. He says he doesn't hold Ethan blowing up against him, and that once he cools off, we should all come back and talk."

Shaking her head, Crystal rose from the table and moved to brush the curtain aside so she could look out the nearby window. "I don't think telling Ethan to calm down and talk to the guy he blames for not doing anything Samantha and Madison is going to accomplish much."

"I know that." Kayden was quiet for a moment then before sighing. "I can't believe your parents want to toe the 'pretend everything is fine' line."

Biting her lip, Crystal let the curtain fall back into place. "Dad just doesn't think causing a fight right now is going to accomplish anything. And it's all Mom can do to stop Victoria and the rest of the Wards from charging into PRT headquarters demanding Costa-Brown's head on a stick if she doesn't let them rescue their teammates."

"What about you? What do you think?"

"I think we need to make it clear that they're not going to be able to sweep this under the rug, but find a way to do it without causing a panic ourselves."

Gazing at the figure on the futon, Crystal hesitated slightly. "I'm gonna wake up Ethan. Then we should find a place to talk about this. Figure out if there's any way to convince Dragon to lower the defenses so we can go in and get them."

"If you're hungry, we could meet at Louie's. I promised Theo I'd bring him back a pizza."

Smiling faintly, Crystal agreed, "Yeah, that sounds good. See you there in an hour?" Once the other woman accepted that, she disconnected and took a step over to the futon, nudging the figure there with her foot. "Ethan?"

Groaning, the man rolled over and blinked blearily at her a few times before he seemed to recognize where he was. "What time is it?"

"Five in the afternoon. I let you sleep for about four hours. How do you feel?"

He hesitated, then sat up. "Like two of my favorite people in the world are trapped in one of the worst hellholes on the planet, and nobody's doing a damn thing about it."

Extending her hand to the man, Crystal helped him stand up. "We're doing something about it."

"Yeah," Ethan nodded while straightening up. "I'm gonna go beat Colin's god damn head in until he starts seeing sense so we can get that hellhole closed for good."

Sighing, Crystal shook her head. "I know, Ethan. I know you're worried about them. But attacking Armsmaster isn't going to get them out of there any faster. It might make you feel better right now, but it won't really help."

His eyes closed briefly, and she saw the pain there. "I have to do something. I can't just sit around. Puppy and Ewok are trapped in that _**god damn place**_."

"Kayden wants to meet us at Louie's for dinner. We can talk about how we're going to convince Dragon to let us into the Birdcage to rescue the others. But even if she agrees, we'll need a teleporter."

Ethan took a long, deep breath, clearly steadying himself before speaking. "According to Wicket and Reach, Faultline's got herself a good one. She's a mercenary, maybe she'd be willing to give us a good price to borrow him for a little bit."

"Might be a good idea to try to contact her group and find out what that'll take." Crystal moved to her laptop and turned it around. "Here, you can use my shower after you watch this video. It might cheer you up."

Cracking his neck to both sides, Ethan stepped that way. "What is it?"

Smiling slightly, Crystal gestured. "Let's just say someone put your little altercation to some music..."

The entire time that Ethan was driving them to Louie's, he drummed his fingers along the steering wheel to LL Cool J's famous song. When they finally arrived, Crystal stepped down from the truck, shaking her head. "I shouldn't have shown that to you."

"You kidding?" Ethan was smiling a little. It suited him better than the haunted expression he'd had for most of the past day. "I think I'm gonna pay someone to put that video up on a Jumbotron somewhere, on constant repeat."

"That might provoke Colin a little too much." Kayden Russel observed, having heard that as she approached them.

"Fuck him." Ethan replied curtly. "He had his chance to do the right thing with this. He's on Team Cover-up." He looked at Penance then. "You know if they got anything out of the creep that Reach beat up?"

She shook her head. "Nothing so far. Every time they try to interrogate him, he keeps switching places with other men. It doesn't seem to last long, but it makes it impossible to get any answers besides his crazy rambling about being a real person."

"What about the crystal thing he was using to teleport them?" Kayden asked.

Ethan tightened his fist, grimacing. "It fell apart as soon as the lab techs touched it. That piece of shit is the one that sent them into the Birdcage. We shouldn't have handed him over. I'd get answers out of him."

Raising a hand, Crystal rested it against the distraught man's arm. "We'll get them back, Ethan. We're not going to stop until we get them out of there. Now you've got to be starving. You haven't eaten since last night. Let's go in and get some food, then figure out how we're going to convince Dragon to open the Birdcage for our teleporter."

"We have a teleporter?" Kayden asked with a raised eyebrow.

"We're working on that."

As soon as they came into the restaurant, Crystal knew that something was wrong. Every eye in the place was glued onto a television set in the corner, and no one was talking over the sound of the news anchor on the screen.

Frowning at her two companions, she gradually made her way closer to the set to see what was so interesting.

The anchor was talking. "Again, we do not know how much of what you just saw is true. But the man in the video is Preston Neidich, otherwise known as Teacher. We want to stress that what you saw is not any proof that what he claims is possible, and no one should panic."

Grimacing, Crystal muttered, "Why don't we ever show up right before the relevant thing gets shown, like in the movies?"

"Hey, you." Ethan nudged the guy in front of them. "What was that all about?"

The teenager with a face full of acne turned back. "Whoa, you mean you missed it? Hey ain't you-"

"What did we miss?" Crystal interrupted him. She had long since realized that revealing her identity alongside the rest of what had been New Wave might have been more trouble than it was worth.

The boy gestured back toward the television. "It's that Teacher dude. He says he's got control of the Birdcage, that he locked the heroes out. He ahh, he said that he can send the bad guys in there anywhere he wants, and that if people don't want to have a bunch of mass murdering villains dropped in their backyard, they gotta pay up."

"Anything else?" Crystal asked carefully.

"Yeah, he uhh, he said he's got hostages. Hero hostages. He said he's got those Battery and Tether chicks, and that the Protectorate... ahhh... guess that's you guys, have been covering it up. But hey, you know, he ain't exactly an unbiased source, so whatever, ya know?"

Biting her lip, Crystal nodded distractedly before taking a step back to the others. She lowered her voice. "Well, the cat's out of the bag now."

Kayden was shaking her head. "What the hell kind of hornet nest is he trying to kick up? Blackmailing... _**everyone**_ or he'll drop Birdcage convicts in their laps?"

Before Crystal could respond to that, one of the other people in the restaurant squinted at her. "Hey... hey, you're Laserdream! What the fuck? Did you know your people lost control of the Birdcage?! Did you know they were kidnapping heroes in there? When were any of you gonna tell us, when those monsters started showing up in our houses?!"

"Damn it." Crystal muttered under her breath before raising her voice. "I'm trying to understand the current situation just as much as you guys are."

"Yeah, sure. You know what's going on." Another man said. "Tell us! Come on, we deserve to know just how fucked we are!"

Grimacing, Crystal did her best to reassure the crowd, though she didn't think it helped very much. While she was doing that, Kayden and Ethan, who had been acting like they weren't with her, made their way outside as inconspicuously as possible.

When she finally made her way out, leaving the restaurant even as more demands were shouted at her, Crystal took to the air to escape their cries.

She joined up with the other two a few blocks away, setting down in a parking lot across from a school. "Well that was fun."

"Can't blame them." Ethan shook his head. "We did cover it up and lie our asses off about it."

"If Teacher's really got control of the place, Dragon can't lower the defenses to let us teleport in even if we convince her to," Kayden observed.

"So what now?" Crystal asked.

"E-excuse me?" A quiet, rather timid sounding voice spoke up. When Crystal and the other two turned that way, they found a red-haired teenage girl standing there. She was obviously pretty, though she looked unnaturally pale and nervous.

"Don't I know you?" Ethan asked, curiously.

"My name's... Emma. Emma Barnes." The girl hesitated after introducing herself. "And... and I... know how you can get into the Birdcage."

"Emma Barnes... you went missing awhile ago." Crystal realized. "Are you okay?"

"That's not i-i-important." The girl stammered. "I can get you inside."

"How?"

In response, Ethan's truck, parked nearby, abruptly came to life. It reversed a few feet, then spun around and pulled backwards into the same spot before honking.

"I... control machines," Emma said quietly. "A l-lot of them, all at once. Pretty much ev...every machine inside of a two block radius, I can sense and control. It's... scary how many of them I can take over if I want to."

Her eyes found Crystal's then. "And... and if you get me close enough, I can use it to shut down the Birdcage so you can get inside."


	14. Arc 14: Chicanery

_**Notes: **Guest – I totally understand hating Emma. I hate her canon self too. Which is why I chose to do this, because redeeming a character as universally loathed as Emma Barnes is a challenge. _

_Imageination – Hopefully you keep enjoying those Birdcager OC's. ;) _

_HellKing666 – The trigger event for Emma is shown in this chapter's interlude. _

_Fuzzyidioms – This story is an AU based on the free web novel called Worm by Wildbow. I'd link it, but since links don't work here, just google parahumans worm, and you'll find it as the top result. _

_Thanks for reviewing, everybody! This is a slightly shorter chapter than the last couple, but hopefully that doesn't detract too much. ;) _

**14.01**

Within seconds of the announcement, I could hear faint echoes of shouts up and down the corridors. Some of it was encouragement, while some just dismissed the claims as being bullshit. Other voices shouted their own appraisals of Teacher being an idiot who was going to get everyone killed. Eventually, it just became random noise, a dull roar.

That was only what I could hear from where we were standing, close to Glaistig Uaine's area, who kept her people extremely organized. I couldn't begin to imagine what it was like up in the more dangerous and chaotically populated areas.

"As an old friend of mine would say," a voice spoke up from the end of the corridor. "That man has become entirely too big for his britches."

A glance that way revealed Miss Militia, approaching with a shake of her head. "Took me awhile to work up the nerve to ask what britches were."

She stopped in front of us and looked me over. "Tether, I'd like to say that I'm glad to see you, but I wish you weren't in here." Her eyes passed to my teammate, appraising her for a moment. "The same goes for you... Reach. We met before, but under different circumstances."

"Ohhh right, shit, yeah." Cassie's head bobbed. "Ahhh, sorry about that whole... bags of manure thing. It was all I had to throw at you."

Miss Militia raised an eyebrow. "You seemed fairly amused at the time.." Her forehead knitted into a slight frown. "But yes, that was... annoying to clean up."

"Well yeah." I swore that Reach was grinning beneath her mask. "It was fucking funny when it happened. You should've seen your face. Pwoof, splat, bleeeeeeh." Her shoulder shook slightly as she snickered mostly silently, before visibly sobering. "Ah, I mean... bad. Bad Reach. I am a terrible person who should be ashamed. Shame on me. And stuff."

Staring at the girl for a moment, Miss Militia finally shook her head. "Quite. Whatever our past, according to Dragon, you willingly came in here to rescue your teammate. I... respect that. I admit, I had my reservations about you when I saw that you had joined the Wards. Not that they announced that fact, but at this point it isn't hard to read between the lines. Especially knowing Penance. But the fact that you're here, and how you got here... I'm willing to give you a chance."

She cleared her throat then. "Especially given our current circumstances."

"Speaking of Dragon," Battery spoke up. "Has there been anything else from her?"

"The last message said that someone was attacking her connection to the system here, and that she had no idea how long she could keep it up." Miss Militia frowned as she looked down the hallway. "I suppose we know who that someone is now. Or at least who's pulling their strings."

"Teacher," I confirmed quietly. "And now he's trying to take the whole Birdcage hostage."

Sam shook her head. "That's not gonna fly. Especially not with people like the Faerie Queen. Actually, come to think of it, would vacuum do anything to stop her?" She glanced toward Ruin, who stood as unobtrusively as possible nearby. When the girl silently shook her head, Sam sighed. "Yeah, didn't think so. Which means if she's pissed off enough, she could decide going after Teacher for fucking with her is worth more than keeping her people alive. Which, considering their deaths wouldn't really hurt her..."

"Is she really that dangerous?" Reach asked. She shrugged when the others looked at her. "I mean, I know she's scary. Hell, she killed Gray Boy, but then she ended up in here."

"She's here," Miss Militia informed her. "Because she chose to be. It's not something the Protectorate advertises, but the only reason Glaistig Uaine ended up in the Birdcage is because she surrendered herself and walked inside voluntarily."

Cassie stared at her. "Why the fuck would she do that? She didn't seem to me like the type to feel guilty about what she did."

"Who knows?" Battery shrugged. "The Faerie Queen has her own goals. Right now, we just need to make sure those goals don't amount to 'killing Teacher at the expense of every other life in this place."

"I'll talk to her." Miss Militia straightened. "See if we can work out a deal to let us go get that son of a bitch and bring him to her so she doesn't have to do it herself. She _**is **_supposed to be royalty after all."

"Good idea." Battery nodded before putting a hand on my shoulder. "I think I should talk to Tether here for a few minutes." Her gaze passed to Reach. "Privately, if you don't mind?"

Shrugging, Cassie raised her foot to poke Ruin in the leg. "Whatever. Hey, Drekavac, I need ammo. Stuff I can touch and then telekinetically move around so I'm not a sitting duck. You got any ideas?"

"Drekavac?" I echoed, confused.

"Eh, Wikipedia it when we get out of here." Cassie replied dismissively. "I was gonna say Banshee, but it seemed too predictable."

Ruin nodded, agreeing to find Reach something to fight with, and pointed the direction we had been going. She and my teammate walked that way, leaving me alone with Battery.

For a moment, Sam and I just stood there silently. Her hand came up and brushed my hair away from my face, reminding me that I was still holding my mask. "You gonna be okay, kid?"

My shoulders raised in a shrug. "I... I can deal. There's more important things going on than my family drama. Whatever happens between me and Trevor can wait."

"Even so, how are you feeling?" She asked, resting her hand against my shoulder and squeezing it.

"I..." My shoulders slumped and I shook my head. "I don't know. I'm so..." I pushed both hands back through my hair, shoving against my head. "... angry at him. I'm so pissed at him. He... he chose to do something that could've really, really hurt anyone who still had a family to protect."

Sam remained silent, letting me talk. I shook my head while continuing. "Like... like I said, when Coil found out who I was, he... he killed our parents. They... they died just because of who I was. And... and maybe I don't really have anyone else that's... that's as helpless as they were, but there's still people I care about, like you and Ethan, and Marissa. And... and beyond that, if I had been someone else, if I had been someone who still had a... a close family, a civilian family, they might've gone through what I did. Teacher could have threatened or... or even killed their parents, their family, and he would've been able to do it because of Trevor." My eyes closed and I shuddered a little. "I didn't think he'd do it. I really, really didn't think he'd do it. But he did, and now... Now I don't know what to do. I don't know what to think about him, what to feel."

Sam's voice was quietly encouraging. "That's not really the only thing you're upset about, is it?"

I looked up at that, finding her gaze understanding and knowing. Biting my lip, I shook my head. "I... I left him there. I left him there, Sam. I was so upset, I was so... pissed at him, that I didn't even try to get him out. If I'd tried, I probably could have gotten him out with us. I could have. But I didn't... I didn't even try." My own voice sounded hollow. "He fucked up, he... I don't know if I can actually forgive him for... for that, but he doesn't deserve this. He doesn't deserve to be here, and I just left him. And now, if he was actually trying to help Ruin, if he had a reason... what he did was still really stupid and... and I'm still pissed at him, but now I'm scared. Now I'm scared that... that was my chance. I'm terrified that I... I'm the one that really fucked up, because that was my chance to get him out, and... and instead, I left him. I left him there, Sam. Even if he did that, even if he was that stupid and wrong, how could I just... just leave him there? It's... I'm still pissed at him. I'm so, so pissed at him. But now I'm scared that I'm never gonna see him again, and that... that's my fault, because I left him. He... fucked up. But so did I. I shouldn't have left him there. And if he... if he..."

"Hey." Sam pulled me into a hug briefly. "You'll get another chance. We'll deal with Teacher, and get your brother back. Then you can hit him, kick him, do whatever you need to do. You're right, he's an idiot. But he's family. You'll get him back. Everyone makes mistakes. That goes for you _and _him. Sadly, being someone you love doesn't excuse someone from acting like a colossal jackass, believe me."

I returned the hug tightly. "Ethan's really worried about you. He was... upset. Especially since his umm... history with this place."

Leaning back out of the hug, Sam smiled wryly down at me. "Apparently he was upset about you too. Dragon said that he punched Armsmaster over the whole 'keeping it secret' thing."

I blanched at that. "He did? Oh. Umm... ouch." Sighing, I slumped back against the nearby wall. "I guess she really listens to Director Costa-Brown's orders, if she still won't send messages out."

"She's doing what she can, within the letter of the Director's instructions. Apparently she even provided Hellhound with the ability to defend herself, by shipping her dogs into the facility. Not that I've seen her. Apparently Lindt and her dogs found one of the less used blocks and kicked the few stragglers out so she could have that whole space to herself. Mostly people leave her alone."

"We need to get her too," I pointed out. "She might be a villain, but she didn't deserve to be in here."

Nodding, Sam regarded me for a moment. "I'm glad you're safe, Mads. I know you're upset right now, and confused, but we'll get Trevor back. We'll get your brother, and everyone else who doesn't belong here, and get the hell out. I promise."

I met her gaze briefly before nodding. "Thanks... Sam. I'll be okay. I... I can do this. I can focus." To demonstrate, I pulled my mask back on, adjusting it before pushing the hood back up. "I'm ready."

A few minutes later, we were in front of Glaistig Uaine once more. Apparently she had insisted on talking to me directly before she would agree to anything. The Faerie Queen was standing in the middle of the prison block, surrounded by her people. In the distance, the sound of infighting among the other cell blocks carried through the hallway. Yet the prisoners on this block remained in control.

That wasn't to say that they weren't upset. There was a lot of murmuring and whispering going on, and we received more than our fair share of dirty looks. But the so-called Queen's people either trusted her enough to keep them safe, or they were more afraid of her than they were interested in any of Teacher's threats or promises. Most likely it was a combination of both. Either way, despite the dull roar of people fighting elsewhere, everything in here was reasonably calm.

Glaistig Uaine herself was flanked by three vaguely ghost-like figures, who stood in a semi-circle around her. They weren't transparent, but their features were rather hard to make out, their clothes indistinguishable from skin, like an action figure whose costume had been painted on. Their faces were almost like mannequins, their eyes blank, lacking either pupil or iris. None of their genders were identifiable. One of them kept their arms stretched out, varying between raising them up until their fingertips touched, and lowering them to either side, similar to a person waving their arms for help. The other two simply stood there, apparently waiting patiently. If ghosts, or whatever they were, could actually be patient.

"_The Chameleon Knight requests that the Fae's retribution for Teacher's treachery be delayed." _That strange chorus of voices spoke as one. She was looking at me, a fact that made me want to shrink back behind Battery. Why was Glaistig Uaine so interested in me? Why was she convinced that I was one of these... three figures she thought were going to help the Fae she believed in so much?

Finally, I made myself nod. "Not... not delay for long, your Highness. We think that... a true Queen shouldn't have to trouble herself with his... betrayal. You should pass judgment, not dirty your own hands by doing things yourself."

"_A queen who sends others to do work she is unwilling to, is no true queen at all." _She regarded me intently, her eyes that I could barely make out through the cloth veil seeming to stare straight through me. "_And he has committed a most grave offense. The sleepers demand this not go unanswered." _

"It won't." I promised. "Please, Miss-umm- Faerie Queen, your Highness, we can find him. We can bring him back to you, so that you can punish him. But if you leave, the people that depend on you, they might all... die."

Her head tilted curiously. "_And you believe that their deaths are not what I seek?" _

"I think if you wanted them dead, they wouldn't be here." I answered honestly. "You take care of your people, Faerie Queen. You'd be even more powerful than you already are if you let them die and collected them, but you don't. I... I don't know why you don't, but I think at least part of you cares about what happens to **your people**. Actually, I'm kind of surprised Teacher hasn't used his control of this place to kill anyone in here yet. You're a real threat to him, and he knows that we're in here with you, but he's just leaving you alone."

I thought I saw a faint smile touch her face then, but couldn't be sure. "_Who says that he has not tried?" _

Her words made me look again at the ghostly figure that was waving his arms back and forth. Was he somehow preventing Teacher from following through on his threats?

Gulping a little, I managed a slight nod. "Well, that just... proves that your place is here, your Highness. Please, let us take care of this for you."

Miss Militia spoke up then. "The girl is right. If we can find a way to get to Teacher's prison block without getting killed, we can let you have your vengeance without risking the rest of your people."

The Faerie Queen regarded that silently for a few moments, before coming to a decision. "_A quest it is, then. Do not fail in what you have promised, Healer. The Fae look unkindly upon those who go back on their word. Bring the traitor here, so that his sentence may be pronounced and carried out." _

I breathed out, nodding a little. "On one condition, your Highness."

Her eyebrows went up, and I heard Battery and Miss Militia choke somewhere behind me. "_A condition?" _

I nodded. "You can't kill him. I know. I know that... that you could rip me apart in about two seconds just for saying it, for even thinking that I can set conditions. But you said you wanted to work with me in the future. And... and I can't do that, I can't be the person you want me to be if I know that I... that I brought someone in just so that you could kill them. Sentence him, punish him, hurt him, but don't kill him. Please. I know the Fae demand justice, but I'm asking you... I'm asking **them**, don't make me do all this just to kill him. I'm supposed to be a healer, right? I can't... I can't be a healer if you make me bring someone to you just to kill him. If you can't agree to that, I... I can't participate in this."

For a very long moment, the whole room was silent. I felt Sam squeeze my shoulder tightly, and knew that both she and Miss Militia probably thought I should have remained silent. But I couldn't. I couldn't have promised to bring Teacher to her if I knew she was going to kill him.

Finally, her head inclined. "_The Fae will accept this condition. His punishment shall be harsh, but he will not be killed." _

I sagged a little. "Thank you, your Highness. Thank you so much."

Clearing her throat, probably before I said something even more stupid, Miss Militia spoke up. "Now we just have to find a way to get to Teacher's area without being sucked into the vacuum."

Glaistig Uaine lifted a hand. One of her summoned ghosts mimicked her gesture, both of them pointing toward another part of the room. As we looked that way, a shimmering gold portal appeared.

"_Go." _Her hand lowered, but the ghost's remained raised, keeping the portal open. "_Do what you must, but return him to face his judgment. The Minstrel will continue to accompany you. Her song will do more there than here." _

I glanced toward where Ruin stood, wondering for a moment if Trevor's actions, idiotic and dangerous as they had been, had really stemmed from wanting to help her.

"Thank you, Faerie Queen." Miss Militia looked to the rest of us. "Okay, well, this is about to get really nasty. Teacher's bound to have plenty of people defending him, and they've got nothing else to lose. Given the choice, I'd leave you two Wards here. But just like an Endbringer attack, we're going to need everyone we've got."

Battery nodded, looking at me. "I'd prefer you stay here too, Tether. I'd prefer you _and_ Reach stay. But Miss Militia and I can't do this by ourselves. Not even with Ruin's help. That said, be careful. You understand?" When I nodded, she focused on Cassie. "That means you too."

"What, you don't want the Nazi to die in a fire?"

Sam rolled her eyes. "No, the Nazi can go right ahead and burn. But the girl that jumped into danger to help a friend, I want her to stay safe. So promise me you're going to be careful."

Even through the mask, I could sense Cassie's self-consciousness. She shrugged finally. "Uhh, yeah, sure. I'll... try not to do anything too retarded."

"And I guess we have our battle cry now." Sam said dryly. "All right... let's go."

The portal into Teacher's area hovered in front of us. Having no idea what was waiting for us on the other side, the five of us, two Protectorate heroes, two Wards, and a Birdcage resident, stepped through.

**14.02**

The second we stepped through the portal (which left an almost electric tingle running over my body for a few seconds), an almost deafening **boom** reverberated through the air around us. In spite of the fact that my power hadn't warned me that any of the others were in danger (or maybe because, since that still left _me_ a possibility), I instinctively ducked.

Everyone else did the same, and the boom repeated itself. It took me another second to realize that the sound was coming from across the room. This place was identical to the other U-shaped prison blocks I'd been in already, except that some kind of metal wall had been put up over where the entrance should have been. The repeated noise was the sound of someone, or something, banging against the wall from the other side.

Clearly we weren't the only ones that had been intent on getting inside.

A group of at least a dozen inmates, nine male and three female, stood arrayed around the walled off entrance. One of them, a short man with close-cropped black hair, held his hands out. Semi-liquid, gel-like metal was pouring out of his palms, running along the floor, and forming up onto the blockade.

The good news was that the rest of the prisoners were so focused on the wall that they hadn't noticed our arrival. The bad news was that that only lasted until a voice from the upper ramp bellowed, "Teleporters inside!"

The formerly clueless prisoners spun, abandoning their vigil against the still-steady blockade.

While Miss Militia cursed and fired a reflexive shot at the figure on the ramp that had shouted, I realized that Ruin was probably going to be a priority target the very second that people recognized her. They'd want to take her out before she had a chance to speak. Quickly, I took her by the arm and leaned close. "My power warns me when people are about to get hurt. I yank them out of the way if I can. Try not to be surprised if you get pulled unexpectedly."

Sure enough, the other girl had time to nod once before a black line appeared between us. Instantly, I used a tether to hurl her away from me, just as some kind of white smoke filled the air where she had been. It smelled putrid and the floor beneath the cloud looked partially melted.

"Like that!" I called out to Ruin as the older girl landed. I turned then, looking for the source of the cloud. My eyes scanned the room, seeing Miss Militia and Battery working together like a well-oiled machine. Battery kept pausing to power up enough of a charge to do real damage, while Miss Militia kept most of the threats pinned with heavy, rapid gunfire. The second that Sam was ready, Miss Militia would switch her weapon into something suited to precision shots, while Battery maneuvered the right targets into position.

Reach, meanwhile, had several metal plates whose sides had been filed down into sharp, jagged edges, and was spinning them through the air, choosing her targets carefully from the stragglers that managed to evade Miss Milita and Battery's corralling job.

Finally, I spotted a heavy set black woman with white smoke where her hands and arms should have been. She was focusing on Ruin, smoky left arm extended like she was aiming.

Before she could attack again, I attached lines from each of my gauntlets to the floor on either side of her, then propelled myself that way. Bringing my feet up, I used my momentum to kick the woman in hard enough to send her to the floor, coughing and choking for breath from the force of the blow.

"See?" Landing, I stood over her and shook my head reprovingly. "Smoking **is** hazardous to your lungs."

An angry snarl twisted the woman's face, and she raised a smoke-arm toward me. Grimacing, I used tethers on my heels to launch myself upward, inverting in the air before attaching another line between both of my feet and the ceiling.

The pull of the line against my boots kept me suspended upside down, attached to the ceiling above. "If you're still having trouble breathing," I called down to the woman below. "You should try the air up here!"

Before she could finish focusing on me to summon that cloud that had almost killed Ruin, I simultaneously released the lines on my feet, while attaching a pair to my opponent's own shoes to launch her up instead. Turning in the air as I fell past her rising form, I moved the lines to the front of her pants and the middle of her shirt, connecting both to the ceiling. Landing easily on my impact-reducing boots, I gave a hard yank on the lines, pulling the woman up face first into the ceiling with enough force to knock her unconscious before I let the lines lower her into a heap on the floor next to me.

I'd barely started to turn, before something slammed into the side of my head, sending me sprawling against the nearby table with a cry. A vicious kick knocked me over, before I found myself yanked back to my feet by a hairy arm that snaked its way around my throat.

"Yeah, bitch." The man's voice hissed in my ear as he choked me. "You know what I'm gonna do to you? I'm gonna peel the fucking skin off your hands, right down to the bones. Then I'm gonna snap each bone off, one at a time. Crack, crack, crack. Then I'm gonna break up those bones and make you fucking eat 'em."

I couldn't breathe, couldn't take in more air. My eyes moved quickly, seeing the table that I had fallen against. It was one of those large, industrial tables that was bolted to the floor.

"Well..." I managed to get out past the arm choking me, though my voice was pretty strained and hard to understand. "I should... get... more calcium... in my.. diet."

With effort, I forced my gaze down just enough to bring the man's leg into my field of view. Immediately, I put a line between his knee and the edge of the table. Then I gave a hard yank. The man's leg was jerked upward past me, the motion sending me forward as well, before the man's knee cracked against the side of the table with an audible pop that left him screaming.

Apparently he had more interesting things to do than make me eat my finger bones now.

That threat taken care of, I turned toward the ramp. Teacher's cell would probably be the top middle one, just like Marquis. That seemed to be the position of power and authority.

Unfortunately, even as I extended a hand that way, a dark red line yanked my attention toward Reach. My teammate was flat on her back, with a very small man perched on her stomach. The man was humming while he licked his lips, clearly tugging at her intrusion suit in an attempt to open it.

Rat-Catcher. His songs (or humming in this case) entranced his target and forced them into a docile state, where they would accept anything that was done without protest or defense. From what little I knew of the small man, he was a cannibal who had used his power to do horrible things to his victims even _**before **_eating them alive.

The red line kept getting darker the more Rat-Catcher fumbled with Reach's temporary costume, and I had to wonder just how batshit crazy the guy was that he was this easily distracted.

Still, he was trying to hurt my friend. Putting a line between the back of his pants and the ceiling, I hauled him up and off of Cassie. Then, before he could focus his song on me, I put a line between the crotch of those pants, and the nearby railing that lined the cell ramp. A yank on that line sent the tiny man screaming through the air until crotch met railing.

Needless to say, he had no interest in further conflict for the time being.

Helping Reach to her feet and steadying her while she got her bearings, I looked around the room. Battery and Miss Militia were still out numbered, but at least half of the threats they'd been facing were down. Those two were so... good at working together, somehow predicting their partner's moves ahead of time with a precision and symmetry that almost seemed choreographed.

Ruin, meanwhile, had been confronted by a man who correctly guessed that she wouldn't dare use her power as long as he stayed where either Miss Militia and Battery or Reach and me were within the area of effect. Whatever power he had was apparently striker-based, because he kept trying to grab the other girl.

I was worried at first, but no line of warning appeared. Ruin hardly seemed to move, yet the man couldn't manage to lay a hand on her. It **looked** simple, like she was barely making an effort, leaning here, twisting her body as though working out a kink in her shoulders there. Every calm, perfectly disciplined motion she made sent the man's grasping hands whiffing at empty air. With every miss, he grew more frustrated and reckless, while Ruin remained utterly placid, avoiding his increasingly desperate strikes with no more _**apparent **_effort than a small tree swaying in the wind.

Finally, he lunged, trying to bodily rush into her with his arms outstretched. Somehow, Ruin managed to duck and twist, sidestepping his charge and leaning under his arms. Her hand seemed to barely brush over his shoulder, and abruptly all of his forward momentum was turned against him as he practically flipped over in the air before slamming face-first onto the floor.

Ruin fell on top of him from behind. I saw her lean close and whisper something near the back of his neck. Positioned the way that she was, the disintegration wave shot down through the man beneath her, and on through the floor. His body crumbled into dust.

"Uhh, wow." Reach had recovered by then, staring at that encounter as well. "Could we just go ahead and make a note not to piss off the girl with the insta-kill power and the badass 'can't touch me' Kung Fu shit?"

"I'm pretty sure that wasn't Kung Fu." I shrugged. "But, uhh, yeah. Consider the note made, stamped, and put on a great big plaque."

Turning my attention back to the top cells, I pointed. "Teacher's cell has got to be up there." _And Trevor, maybe, _I added silently.

Looking toward the other two heroes, I called out, "You guys okay down here!?"

"Go!" Battery called, bracing herself against a wall to charge up for a second before diving aside just as a massive brute of a man slammed his fist into it. "Find Teacher!"

Reach summoned her razor discs back, and the two of us bolted for the ramp. After a few steps, I warned her, "Going up." Then I attached lines to each of our costumes, hauling us through the air, over the edge of the railing, and onto the top of the ramp about two cells down from the middle.

Together, the two of us bolted for the cell. We reached the entrance, in time to find... no one.

I blinked at the cell in front of us. There was nobody inside. Instead, there were three television screens arranged at the back of the cell, facing the entrance. All were blank.

As we stood there in confusion, the screen on the left came to life, revealing Teacher. He was standing inside some other cell, though I had no way of knowing where it was. "Ah," he said upon seeing us there. "Yes, as it turns out, I am _not_ actually stupid enough stay inside my assigned cell block after threatening the so-called Faerie Queen. I do hope that my students have been adequately entertaining you, however."

"Where are you?" I spat the words in frustration. "What the hell are you trying to do, piss off every single person in the world? They're not gonna let you keep control of the Birdcage!"

Rather than argue that point, the plain-faced man simply nodded. "Of course not. Nor are the nations I demanded tribute from in exchange for not dropping Birdcage residents inside their borders likely to bow to such pressures."

I shook my head slowly. "What... what the hell are you trying to do if you already know nobody's going to do what you're demanding? What's the _**point**_?"

Clearing his throat like some kind of professor, the man linked his hands behind his back and began to lecture. "Ah, the point. Well, you see, the point was to make all of these important people start demanding answers. Answers that they could only get from one man in one location."

The other two screens lit up then, the first revealing the front of what I recognized as the national PRT headquarters, taken from across the street. There were black SUV's with several different country's flags flying from the front parked everywhere. Finally, the third screen showed the inside of what was obviously an interrogation room.

Krouse's clone, Defiant, was strapped down to a chair in the interrogation room, while three men and Director Costa-Brown stood on the other side, clearly urging Defiant to talk to them.

"They've tried harsher methods than talking, of course." Teacher interjected. "But the poor boy just exchanges himself with one of the others whenever they try to play too rough."

Footsteps came up behind us, as Battery and Miss Militia came in at a jog. Sam was talking. "Ruin's containing the rest. Have you got-" She stopped talking at the sight of the monitors, eyes passing over them silently.

"What is this?" Miss Militia demanded, stepping in next to me. "Teacher, your followers are contained. This attempt to take over the Birdcage is over, and the best you can hope for is surrendering so that the mob you've pissed off doesn't rip you apart piece by piece. Now, what do you _actually_ want?"

"As I was just explaining to your proteges, if you hadn't been late in arriving," Teacher scolded. "I have what I want. Many important people demanding answers from a single person, the dictatorial Alexandria."

Beside me, Reach snorted. "Hate to break it to you, dude, but Alexandria isn't there."

"Oh, but I assure you, she is very present."

My eyes found Director Costa-Brown again, and widened. No. That couldn't be right. She was the head of the PRT. She couldn't be Alexandria _**too**_, could she?

"Holy shit." Cassie muttered, as the same realization came to her.

"Indeed." Teacher gave an elaborate shrug. "So as you can see, I already have precisely what I want. Ahead of schedule, even. Thank you for that, my dear." He nodded toward Reach. "The plan had been for the rest of Tether's team to find and arrest him some time after her disappearance, but you served that purpose quite admirably on your own."

"Why would you want-" I started to ask before it occurred to me. "Oh no."

"You see, I knew you could get it." Teacher motioned with his hand, and the camera panned back, revealing the power-nullifier cape standing next to him with a bag clutched to his chest.

"My students," Teacher informed us, "are very devoted to the cause."

I stood flat-footed, helpless. There was no way to know what cell Teacher was in, or even what _**cellblock**_ it was. We had nothing, no way of finding him in time.

"Teacher!" Miss Militia shouted at the screen. "Stop this! You can't possibly think-"

Before she could finish the sentence, the man next to Teacher changed. Defiant stood there.

On the second screen, the sudden appearance of the power-nullifier with the backpack in his lap brought Director Costa-Brown... Alexandria... stepping that way reflexively.

And in the next instant, the camera feed on that room went bright white, then faded to static.

At the same time, the third camera feed, the one that showed the exterior of the national PRT headquarters with all of those important-looking cars parked out front, grew almost painfully bright as a blinding white flash took up the entire view.

When it faded, nothing was left of the PRT headquarters. Nothing but rubble, and death.

**14.03**

I couldn't speak. I couldn't move, breathe, or even think. All I could do in that moment was stare at the screen, hand covering my mouth through the mask, and think of all the people who had just died, because we failed.

"No..." The voice was so small, so weak and pitiful, that it took me a moment to recognize it as my own. "No... no..."

Teacher's voice was smug, his superiority, in his mind, clearly established. "So you see-" That was as far as he got before a gunshot interrupted his gloating, and the television screen exploded into a shower of glass and sparks.

"That," Miss Militia lowered her weapon, her voice hard. "Is just about enough of that." She focused on the rest of us. "We have to find him. Now."

I shook my head, my voice still wavering. "But how? This place is huge. He could be in any of the cells. He... he could be anywhere."

"I know where he is." Someone else, someone unexpected, spoke up. I turned quickly, to find Trevor standing at the cell entrance. His eyes were downcast, his shoulders slumped.

"You son of a-" Cassie started to take a step that way, but Battery stopped her with a hand. "What the fuck are you skulking around for? Trying to betray and traumatize someone else?"

Her words seemed to hit Trevor like a physical blow. His eyes closed and he shook his head. "That wasn't what I..." Taking in a breath and letting it out again, he repeated, "I know where he is. I can tell you where to go to find him."

"Oh yeah." My friend's voice was derisive. "Because trusting you last time worked out _**sooo**_ well."

"Quiet, Reach." Miss Militia admonished her. "Mr. Clements, if this is another ploy, I promise you that you'll be charged as an accessory in each and every death Teacher just caused."

He cringed at that, still refusing to look at any of us. "It's not. I didn't... I didn't know that he was gonna go that far. I didn't..." He swallowed then. "I didn't know a lot of things." Finally, he looked up, his eyes passing briefly over me before he focused on Miss Militia. "I swear, he... he just killed all those people and... and I didn't want that. I didn't _**know.**_ I'm an asshole, okay? I'm an asshole and a piece of shit, but I _**didn't know he was going to kill all those people.**_" He gave a little shudder then. "But I know where he is because he had us set up his cameras and communication packages down there. I know you don't trust me. I know you shouldn't trust me, but I swear I'll tell you how to find him."

Miss Militia was quiet for a moment, staring at him appraisingly. Then she looked at me, her silent question obvious. She wanted to know what I thought.

"He didn't know," I said quietly. "He wouldn't have gone along with any of it if he knew." I believed that. My brother could be a selfish idiot who didn't think things through, but _my personal feeling of betrayal aside,_ Trevor wasn't a mass-murdering psychopath, and he couldn't have known just how far Teacher was going to take this. Considering where he was, he _**should**_have known, but that was more lack of self-awareness than homicidal intent.

Nodding, Miss Militia focused on Trevor again. "Where is he?"

"It's the block that the dog girl cleared out." Trevor said promptly. "Teacher made a deal with her. He said he'd make sure the block stayed empty except for one cell, and she could have the rest of the space. She just wanted to be left alone, and he made sure it happened."

"You know where that is?" Battery asked Miss Militia.

"Yeah, I've been all over this place." The woman's eyes were hard as she stared at my brother. "A lot of it spent looking for you when you kept disappearing."

He blanched. "I'm sorry. I know I was stupid. I just-"

"Not now." Miss Militia left the cell, taking him by the arm to give him a push inside. "Stay. Do not move from this cell, do you understand? Do. Not. Move."

I started to step out of the cell as well, but Trevor's hand caught my arm. I stiffened, resisting the urge to punch him, as well as the opposite reaction to hug him because, in spite of everything, he was my brother and he was alive.

"I'm sorry." His voice was soft, a whisper. "I didn't know. I didn't think it really mattered. I was..."

Pulling my arm out of his grip, I stared at him briefly. "I don't have time to talk about this, Trevor. There's more important things going on than how I feel about you. Just... just do what she said. Stay here."

I left before he could say anything else, joining the others down on the main floor. Miss Militia was talking to the inmate that was still maintaining the blockade, while Ruin stood nearby keeping the conscious prisoners from trying anything.

"You will open a doorway, let us out, and then maintain the blockade until we get back." Miss Militia informed the inmate. "Ruin, if he or anyone else in here tries anything, you have full permission to put them down. They're all complicit in an attack that already resulted in the loss of god knows how many lives. Not one person would bat an eye if you disintegrated every last one of them."

The Blockade prisoner seemed to gulp a little, before giving a very short nod. A small doorway appeared in the center of the metal wall that he was maintaining.

As soon as the hole appeared, a cry went up from outside, and one of the enraged inmates tried to storm in, only to meet the barrel of Miss Militia's shotgun as she ordered, "Back up."

"Now why should we listen-" A deafening report filled the air as the Protectorate hero shot the man point-blank, leaving his body to drop to the floor.

"Does anyone else have a problem with getting out of our way?" She asked the rest of the Birdcage residents that were on the other side of the barrier.

They cleared a path, and we exited, the doorway closing behind us. Now we were surrounded by a group of pissed off, angry Birdcage prisoners on either side, glaring hatefully and obviously waiting for an excuse or an opening.

Still, we walked. Miss Militia tracked her weapon along each prisoner, making them back up and give us room. Step by step, we eased our way through the mob, then backed away from them until they refocused on their efforts to get through the blockade. After all, the four of us weren't the ones they were really pissed at.

"Which way?" Battery asked, looking up and down the hall once we were far enough from the mob.

Lifting a hand, Miss Militia pointed. Together, we sprinted. Teacher could _not_ get away with this.

Reaching the corridor just outside of the cell block that Trevor had indicated, we found some kind of reinforced blast door blocking the entrance. As best as I could tell, it was meant to block the cell off in case of a riot.

Which raised the question of why they hadn't used that down in Teacher's actual cell block, but maybe he had assumed that they'd eventually tear through that, and the longer they were focused on trying to get through a blockade that kept regenerating itself, the less chance of them finding his actual location.

I put my hand against the door, just as the lights went out, leaving us in total darkness. "Oh great." I muttered. "Now we're back to this game again."

Teacher's voice echoed up and down the hall. "Now, you broke my monitor before I could finish explaining the situation to you girls. Do you know how rude that makes you?"

Before any of us could respond, air began to rush past us with a heavy roar of wind, as the oxygen was torn out of the hallway. In seconds, we wouldn't be able to breathe, and I couldn't see to set up a tether anywhere. Hell, for all I knew, there were black lines leading to each of the other three, but I couldn't see them through the darkness.

"Maybe you'll be more inclined to listen when you don't have the air to interrupt." Teacher chuckled.

I had to find a way. It wasn't Grue's darkness, so I could still use my power, but only on things I could feel.

Turning, I groped out until I found Reach, squeezing her arm reassuringly. Then I tugged the other girl to me, pushing her hand up against the door before leaning close to whisper, using the last of my air, "Count to ten, then push this thing as hard as you can."

Letting go of her arm, I took a step to the side to give both of us room, and put my own hands against the blast door, counting silently in my head. The oxygen was gone, and it was all I could do to focus and not let myself think about what had happened to all of those people.

I attached lines between my hands and the blast door. As soon as my silent inner count hit ten, I _**shoved**_ as hard as I could with them, hearing the grunt of effort from Reach as she did the same with her power. Together, we pushed at the hatch, and the protesting sound of ripping, grinding metal filled the air.

Finally, with a loud pop and the scream of tearing metal, the door was torn inward, broken over almost in half before it ripped off its hinges and went flying across the room on the other side.

Air, blessed oxygen filled air, flooded back to us, and the light in the cell block beyond was almost blinding. Quickly, the four of us moved through, gasping in deep lungfuls as we stumbled.

The second we entered, I saw a dark red line pop up toward Battery. Instantly, I used a tether to shove her backwards. As soon as I did, a man leapt from the ramp above and to the right, some kind of cobbled together weapon in his hand spitting out laser that narrowly missed her.

Miss Militia returned fire with a single shot from what was again a pistol. She didn't miss.

Two more men appeared at the top of the ramp above us, defending their leader. Reach put one of her metal discs in the path of one of their shots before flinging it at him, while Battery ran forward with near-blinding speed, leaping up the entire height to the railing, where she caught the other man and pitched him over her shoulder to crash down onto the floor.

Yet another pair of men came from one of the lower cells. Before they could set themselves, I launched four darts at them, two from either gauntlet. The first two missed, but the others hit the men and sent them to the floor. Out of darts, I started to reload.

"Disappointing." Teacher lamented while I was still grasping for more ammunition. He emerged from the cell at the far end on the top row, hand held high. "But not entirely unexpected." He raised his voice. "I highly recommend no one make any move toward me. What I hold here is a deadman switch detonator. Tether there happens to be familiar with them, I know." The man looked at me. "But I assure you, the explosives that this detonator is wired to don't take up a single block. If I release this button, the damage that was just caused by our departed friend will make the destruction of PRT headquarters seem like a single car crash compared to an Endbringer arrival."

Miss Militia's voice was hard, her anger palpable. "Is that what you want, Teacher? To generate all the anger and hate of an Endbringer, without _any_ of what makes them a true threat?"

His face twisted a little. She'd hit a sore spot. "A true threat? I would say I've surpassed what they've managed. My _**legacy**_is assured. I will be remembered as the man who killed the Director of the PRT, who happened to also be one of the Triumvirate."

"Is that what you think?" It was a new voice, an unexpected one. Even Teacher looked surprised, as we all turned quickly to the source.

Mr. Hebert, his shadow form flowing back and forth in the air, stood there. He was accompanied by Assault, Laserdream, Penance, and Armsmaster. There was also one other person, the one who had spoken.

Alexandria.

Teacher's eyes were wide. "No... no... you're dead. It's a trick. Alexandria is Rebecca Costa-Brown. I know it. I figured it out. She's Costa-Brown, and I killed her. She's dead. You're dead."

"You're right." Alexandria informed him coolly. "Director Costa-Brown, and far too many others, died from your cowardly attack. But while she was an incredible woman, Rebecca was _**not **_a parahuman. And she certainly wasn't me. You made a mistake, Teacher. Many, in fact. Do you have any idea how many enemies you just made? Senator Richard Aberforth was discussing the PRT's inability to control the Birdcage with Director Costa-Brown when your attack happened."

The name... I knew that name... It took me a second, but then I remembered. Senator Aberforth, from Michigan, was one of the PRT's biggest outspoken critics. He had made a career out of lambasting every single move they made, and delighted in passing restrictions on their authority. Of course he had been first in line to demand Director Costa-Brown's head on a pike when all this went down.

"In fact," Alexandria went on. "You managed to kill off Senator Aberforth's entire entourage, all of the considerably powerful and wealthy men that he brought with him to get the answers that he believed Director Costa-Brown had. They're dead now, along with hundreds of innocent people who were working in that building. You're done, Teacher. A kill order has _already_been signed."

Teacher's head shook violently. "No. No, this is a trick. You're dead. You're not Alexandria."

I heard the predatory smile in her voice as she took a single step toward him. "Do you want to find out how Alexandria I am?"

The man's eyes widened. "No! Get away from me. Stay away! You don't want me to drop this remote. You really, really don't want to see how much damage I can do. Just... just stop lying. You're not Alexandria. You can't be. I figured out your secret. I beat you. I beat all of you. How... how did you even get in here?! I control the Birdcage."

"Not anymore." Armsmaster informed him. "Let's just say we have a friend in the control room whose power trumps yours. You are officially locked out."

Teacher's head shook angrily at that as he paced for another few seconds, constantly staring at Alexandria in disbelief. While he moved, I clasped my hands in front of me as though praying.

Finally, the man pointed at me. "You. Come here. You and I are going to get out of here. All the good you did during the Leviathan attack, the Protectorate won't dare risk losing you."

Battery stepped in front of me, but I touched her arm and shook my head. "It's okay. Trust me."

Slowly, I walked toward the man. Assault looked like he was ready to come across the room and use Teacher head as a racquetball. Alexandria was coldly furious. Laserdream and Penance had been silent the whole time, but were obviously barely restraining themselves in the face of Teacher's threat.

When I reached Teacher, he grabbed my arm with his free hand. "You and I, we're leaving this place the same way _**they**_got in. They're not going to risk anything happening to you, and you won't risk anything happening to all the people this remote is connected to, will you?"

"You're right," I said softly. "I won't... I can't risk letting you kill anybody else. I _**won't**_ allow you to kill one more person."

His hand was tight on my arm. "You won't allow it? How do you plan on accomplishing that, I wonder?"

I swallowed, letting out a low breath. "Well, I kinda figured I'd give you the finger."

With those words, while he was still confused, I lifted my hand and opened it to reveal the severed finger inside my palm before shoving it into his wrist as hard as I could.

The finger melted like jello, swarming up over Teacher's hand with the remote, forcing him to keep it tightly clasped against his will. It crept all the way up his arm while the man tried to jerk away, his mouth falling open in a scream just as the rapidly spreading liquid covered his face.

It was over a second later. Where Teacher had been, reformed from the finger she had left me and the man's own body mass, stood Pandora.

**14.04**

Oddly enough, the tense situation with everyone ready to fly off the handle didn't really let up after Teacher was completely absorbed and essentially eaten alive by the near-unstoppable self-duplicating potential S-Class Threat.

"Guys, guys, just calm down." I held my hands out to the two gathered groups. "It's okay. Pandora isn't going to hurt anyone else, are you?" I tried to inject the last words with confidence rather than concern.

"They are not enemies." Pandora replied, as though it was the simplest, most obvious answer in the world. "We have promised to kill only enemies. You know this already, Tether-Friend."

"Yeah, I did. But they needed to hear it." I looked across the room at Armsmaster pointedly. "Would you mind saying it out loud though? You know, because people are weird."

"We will kill no one who is not an enemy either to ourselves, or to a friend or innocent."

Seeing Armsmaster relax marginally told me that his lie-detector had picked up the truth in what she was saying. He didn't_completely_ let down his guard, however. Probably because he didn't quite trust that 'I really won't kill anyone innocent now' reliably meant 'I won't ever kill anyone innocent.' After all, normal people changed their minds all the time, and he had no way of knowing how strongly Pandora took promises.

It was Alexandria who spoke, floating off the ground to move closer. "This... would be the clone that I've heard so much about."

I winced at her phrasing. "Uh, Alexandria, this is Pandora. She's a _friend." _I stressed the word, looking at the girl in question. "However she came about, she's a friend now. And she just..." Even with all the death that the man had caused, and my own resolution to do what I had to in order to stop him, I still tripped over the word. "... just killed Teacher to stop him. You said he had a kill order on him already, which means what she did was allowed, no repercussions."

"Yes." Alexandria's voice was soft, contemplative, as she examined the clone in front of her. Pandora had manifest with her red half-mask. "Pandora, is it? Would you mind terribly if I look at your face? If you are a c-" She stopped herself, pausing to consider. "-if you are identical in appearance to Panacea, I would... like to see it."

"Do you remove what obscures your face?" Pandora asked, bluntly. "Dinah-Friend has said that protecting one's identity and appearance is important."

I winced a little at the very thought of refusing _Alexandria. _"Err, it's not really protecting your identity when they know who you are already, Pandora."

For a moment, Pandora looked at me, clearly considering before she spoke. "We will trust your word, Tether-Friend." Then she removed the mask. Rather than tugging it away, the 'cloth' simply dissolved back into a gel-form and was absorbed into her skin.

I got my first good look at her face in awhile. She had darkened her skin slightly as compared to the very pale Amy. The freckles were gone, and as a whole, her features seemed somehow... slightly more predatory than her progenitor. Other than that, however, she was very clearly Amy Dallon.

"Fascinating." Alexandria's whisper was soft, clearly amazed as she slowly lifted her hand to press against the side of Pandora's face. I had a moment of panic that the other girl was going to react badly to that, and I was going to have to explain why the girl that _**I**_ had brought in had ended up killinng and absorbing the second-in-command of the entire Protectorate.

For her part, Pandora allowed the hand to touch her for a moment before speaking in a reproving tone. "You are not a friend, Alexandria-Person. Touching us was not agreed upon."

Drawing her hand back, Alexandria nodded. "Of course, yes. You're simply... a fascinating case study." The hero cleared her throat then. "The kill order justifies your attack, yes. We won't pursue you for that." She paused before speaking again. "I must ask, however. I have been... privileged enough to witness the video recordings taken from the inside of Coil's headquarters. During the initial interviews where he was assessing your abilities, you seemed... forgive me for saying it, but much more... accustomed to human contact and interaction. Your speech patterns especially, were more... of what would be considered normal and unremarkable than they are now."

For a moment, it didn't seem like Pandora was going to respond to that. She simply watched Alexandria silently. Finally, she spoke clinically, "Altering our mental structure to remove unwanted biological imperatives included an unforeseen side effect which altered or removed certain social awareness and understanding."

"You changed your brain chemistry and accidentally altered your personality and memory of social norms," Alexandria translated.

"Yes." Pandora looked at me, then back to the older hero. "But you would not have enjoyed an experience with our former selves. They were... dangerous. They would not have helped Dinah-Friend. Nor would they have assisted in this situation."

I saw the other woman smile faintly. "And we wouldn't want that."

"He's really dead?" Armsmaster had approached us by then. In the background, I could see Sam and Ethan reuniting, ignoring everyone else for the moment. Reach and Penance were also talking, while Laserdream guarded the entrance, and Miss Militia moved in and out of the nearby cells, making sure that no possible threats remained. Finally, Mr. Hebert just sort of floated there in the middle of the room, quietly glowering at everyone who looked at him.

"Yeah. Teacher's dead." I let out a long sigh finally, eyes closing briefly behind my mask. He was _**evil**_. He'd killed so many people, and yet... I swallowed the guilt away. "We... killed him."

"You were allowed." Alexandria stated firmly. "The kill order stands. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to call in and let them know to send in the containment teams to start restoring order to this place."

"Miss, ummm..." I hesitated, blanching at the idea of directly addressing **her** without being addressed first. "Uhh, Alexandria? I was just... Teacher... he was saying that you were Director Costa-Brown..." She looked at me, her expression impossible to read through her helmet. "And I was just... she's... really dead?" I finally asked, hesitantly. "I mean... all those people are..."

Her head dipped slightly in a nod. "Teacher was responsible for a tragic number of deaths, including Rebecca's. It's going to take a long time, and a lot of effort, to recover from the blow."

A hand caught my arm then, and I found myself pulled around and yanked into a hug from Ethan. He hoisted me off the floor entirely, holding me tight to his chest so that it was hard to breathe. "Uuuulp!"

"Hey, Ewok." He hugged me tighter for a moment, cutting off my air entirely before finally releasing me. "I thought I told you_**not**_ to get taken into the Birdcage. Wasn't I very, very clear about that?"

"Sorry." I mumbled self-consciously, shifting from foot to foot. "I just ummm... I couldn't let Defiant blow up-" My eyes widened then and I jumped. "Defiant! He should be here!"

Ethan just looked at me blankly. "And Defiant would be...?"

"Uh, Trickster's clone. The guy with the... the one Teacher was working with to do all this." I explained. "He switched places with that power nullifier to send in the bomb that... but if that guy's body was vaporized, would he... switch back still, or be stuck here?"

"We'll do a thorough search." Armsmaster assured me. He was standing well away from Ethan, but close enough to hear and comment. "Dragon's still working on getting everything back online, but..." He turned slightly, activating his comm. "Oversight, the man who was being interrogated in the PRT building. Do you have eyes on him with any of the cameras?"

A clearly computer-altered voice came back. "I umm, just a second. I need to... the face recognizing... thing is... uhh, confusing. Gimme a... a second..."

I blinked in confusion. "Who's Oversight?"

I saw a weird grimace pass over Ethan's face then, but when I glanced at him questioningly, he just shook his head and mouthed, 'I'll explain later.'

"She's how we got in here." He went on out loud. "Some kind of machine and computer control power on a large scale. She shut down the Birdcage's defenses, and she's working to give the controls back to Dragon. It all still seems pretty new to her though."

The voice came back a moment later. "He's not here. He's definitely not in the prison. I don't know where he is, but umm... errr... hey, wait a second, why is M—err-why is there a... a normal human in here? I know that guy, he's ummm, Trevor Clements."

That confused me more. How did this 'Oversight' know who Trevor was?

Ethan glanced at me before replying, "He was a... hostage. We'll get him out of here too, don't worry. You're sure the man we're looking for isn't anywhere in the prison?"

"Well..." Oversight sounded hesitant. "I mean, as sure as I can be. I took his face and told the computer to run it through all the cameras, and it didn't give a match or anything. I could ummm... tell it to look back over the last... uhhh, hour or something and find out if he was here before?"

"Do that," Armsmaster agreed. "How's restoring Dragon's access going?"

"Uh, ummm... just a... a second... there's some kind of personal block. It looks physical, like somebody ummm... made something and stuck it in the wiring somewhere to keep her computers locked out. Someone's gonna have to go and physically remove it."

"I'll do it." Armsmaster started to walk, halberd held tight in one hand. "Just tell me where to go."

As he left, I leaned up toward my guardian to whisper, "Did you really punch him?"

"Eh," Ethan shrugged. "He had it coming." His hand squeezed my shoulder then. "Are you all right?"

"I umm..." I let out a long sigh. "I'm okay. There's a lot we need to talk about. I-"

"Found Lindt." Miss Militia announced, emerging from one of the upper cells. "She and her dogs are unconscious. Looks like they were drugged. We'll take them with us and sort out where she belongs once we get somewhere marginally less dangerous."

"Anything stopping us from picking up anyone else that doesn't belong in this place, and getting out of here right now?" Sam asked, having approached to stand with Ethan and me.

Wincing, I spoke up. "I'm gonna have to explain to the Faerie Queen why I didn't fulfill my part of the deal. I promised I'd bring Teacher back to her, so that she could punish him. I even made her promise not to kill him. That... seems pretty stupid now."

Ethan was staring at me. "You convinced Glaistig Uaine to promise not to kill someone that annoyed her? How... in the hell did you- you know what, never mind. Just never mind, I don't want to know."

Something occurred to me then, and I straightened. "Oh—Ethan. What about your umm, your dad? I mean, if he's in here somewhere, and we... just happen to be here..."

"No." His head shook. "He died in here, a long time ago."

Wilting, I sighed. "Sorry. I didn't know."

"Hey," Ethan's hand squeezed my shoulder once more and he tugged me into another hug. "I've still got my family."

The words made me blush, ducking my head to look at the floor. I shivered a little. "I... I guess I have to go explain things to the Queen."

We stopped to get Trevor and Ruin first, before making our way back to the Faerie Queen's cell block. Alexandria, Mr. Hebert, and Laserdream stayed in the other block to bring in the containment teams and direct them. Pandora stayed with Crystal, at my request (I didn't want to know how the self-styled Faerie would react to her), while Armsmaster worked to remove the physical blocks that Teacher had apparently installed that limited Dragon's computers ability to connect to the place. That left Miss Militia, Ethan, Sam, Penance, and Reach to come with Trevor, Ruin, and myself.

Glaistig Uaine was waiting with her back to us, alone in the middle of her cell block. I could see her people in their individual rooms. Before I could speak, the shrouded girl turned to look at me. Her voices were low, a slight yet clear warning to them. "I am not pleased. You are unable to fulfill the promise that was made, Healer. Teacher no longer remains."

I gulped in spite of myself. "I... yeah, sorry. I mean, I'm really, really sorry, your Highness. I swear I wasn't lying when I spoke to you before. The... the situation changed. Teacher killed a lot of people, and there were even more that were going to die if he wasn't stopped... right then."

"Nonetheless," she responded. "A promise was made, and then broken. My retribution remains unfulfilled. _**Some**_ would transfer that anger onto the oath-breaker."

Sam stepped in front of me. "It wasn't her fault, Faerie Queen. She did what she had to do in the heat of the moment. Surely you understand the need-"

"Be silent." The chorus of voices ordered, Glaistig Uaine cutting her hand through the air. "I do not speak to you, Vessel, but to the True Healer. What I understand is not for you to say."

She turned her attention back to me then. "Circumstances though there may have been, a promise was made that must, somehow, be kept."

I started to respond to that, but it was Trevor who spoke up, unexpectedly. "I'll stay." When everyone whirled around to look at him, he had the grace to blanch. "I mean, uhh, I know I'm nothing. But I'm her uhhh, her brother. So... that's gotta mean something to you, right? I'll stay here with you."

"What?" I stared, mouth working. "No. No, that's not-"

He interrupted. "I just _**helped**_ Teacher do all this. I didn't know what he was doing, I was too god damn stupid to think about it, but I did help him. I'll stay here and work for the Queen. Not... forever, I hope, but..."

"One year." Glaistig Uaine held up a finger. "You will remain here, in my service, for one year. That will fulfill... one of the three concessions I now require."

"But he... he..." I wanted to protest, but I couldn't find the words. Trevor, my brother, was volunteering to stay _**in the Birdcage.**_ "He'll be in danger here. There's no way he can survive."

The Faerie Queen stared at me. "He will live because I say he will. Do you doubt _**my**_ ability to hold to my oath?"

I gulped at that, shaking my head. "N-no, your Highness. I'm just... worried about him." And I was. Even though he had behaved like an **idiot**, he was still my brother.

"Of course." Her head dipped in understanding. "Blood is important. Nonetheless, his promise is accepted."

"You said... one of three?" I finally put in, my voice dry.

"Yes." The Queen looked at me. "Second, you will return here once a month, for the entire day. I am intrigued by you and will spend that time discussing... things."

Miss Militia spoke up then. "Not to interrupt, your Highness, but about her coming and going, and the boy there leaving after a year, the Birdcage isn't designed to let people in and out willy nilly."

"And yet," Glaistig Uaine replied easily. "Comings and goings are indeed occurring even now. That will be allowed to continue in order to fulfill this bargain. My lack of retribution requires it. As the security to this system is restored, an allowance for the True Healer's visitations, and her brother's eventual dismissal, **will** be included."

"What was the third thing?" I asked, before any other arguments could be made.

"The Minstrel." She lifted a hand to point at Ruin. "She has done nothing to belong to this place. You will do your duty, Healer. You will piece the sleeper back together, ease her pain and put right what went wrong. You will take her from this place, and help her."

For her part, Ruin's eyes widened and her head shook. She pointed to her own mouth.

"Hiding is no solution." The Faerie Queen's voice was gently reproving. "You have a gift, Minstrel, if you would only learn to use it properly. The Healer may help you do so."

"Done." I nodded, that part easy to accept. "I don't know _**how**_, but we'll help Ruin. We'll figure out how to control her voice, somehow."

Miss Militia was stiff beside me. "One year of service, monthly visitation, and help for your... vassal. Is that acceptable?"

Glaistig Uaine gave the very slightest of nods. "It is."

I felt a touch at my side, and turned to see Trevor staring at me. His mouth opened and then shut before he let out a sigh. "Listen, I know you hate me. I know. But if you could just... just talk to Mom and Dad. Tell them... I don't know. Just try to explain?"

My heart sank, and for a second, I was reliving the moment that Marissa had told me what happened, when my life had lost something so precious, forever.

Closing my eyes as a shudder went through me, I let out a long breath before looking at him again. Reaching up, I tugged my own mask off so that he could see my face.

As soon as he saw my expression, Trevor knew something else was wrong. "What? What happened?"

"Tr-trevor..." I said slowly, my voice breaking slightly as I spoke. "I... I have to tell you something."

**14.05**

I took Trevor aside, into one of the empty cells, and told him what happened to our parents, and who had been responsible. Through his initial disbelief, then shock, and then mounting grief, I told him everything I knew about it, including the fact that it had been done to get at me.

By the time I finished, he was sitting on the floor, staring at the wall across from him. "I didn't know." He repeated dully a couple of times. "I didn't know. Over a month and I... I didn't... know..." He trailed off, going silent for a moment before saying flatly, "I really don't know anything."

I was still so very angry with him, yet I didn't want to see him in pain. He was my brother. "Trevor," I said quietly. "If you'd been there, she would have killed you too."

Trevor lifted his gaze to stare hollowly at me briefly, before swallowing. "I'd say I just need some time alone, to think, but I guess I'm about to get that."

"You didn't have to agree to that."

His head shook. "I kinda did. Look, I know you're pissed at me. I deserve it. But... take care of Ruin, okay? She's... she deserves better than she got. Make sure she's all right. I thought I could fix things for her, but now... just watch out for her."

I opened my mouth, then shut it before nodding. "I will. Part of the deal with the Faerie Queen. Wouldn't want to piss her off." Sobering, I stood still and indecisive for a second, then exhaled. "Remember when we were little, when _**I**_ was little, and we'd play in the backyard, and I used to call time-out all the time whenever you were about to win? I'm... I'm still... really... really upset with you. I'm so angry I can barely look at you. But... but for a minute, I'm calling time-out again."

That said, I knelt next to my brother and embraced him. I hugged him tightly and whispered, "I'm glad you're not dead. Mom and Dad dying wasn't your fault. You couldn't have done anything if you were there. Be careful in here. Please, please don't do anything stupid. I don't hate you, and I don't want you to die. Give me some time, maybe when I come back, I'll be ready to talk some more."

Straightening after another moment of embrace, I looked down at him. "Promise you'll be careful?"

"As careful as I know how to be." He shrugged a little, helplessly. "I'll try. See you next month?"

I swallowed before nodding. "Yeah, next month." Closing my eyes briefly before opening them, I turned to walk out of the cell, leaving my brother to his private thoughts, the grief I'd had a head-start on.

I still felt so betrayed by him that it was hard to think straight, but the one thing I'd known was that I didn't want to tell Trevor that our parents were dead, and then leave him thinking that I hated him.

As I emerged from the cell, mask still held in one hand, I saw Miss Militia standing next to the block entrance, talking to Crystal. Most of the Faerie Queen's people were staying in their cells until the heroes left. There was no sign of the Queen herself.

I was tired and I just wanted to go home. I wanted to see Mars, Dennis, and my other friends, eat something that wasn't prison food, and even sleep in my own bed. Although we technically hadn't been in this god forsaken place that long, it felt like an eternity.

When I reached the pair of women, Miss Militia looked to me. "Tether," she said gently. "Your brother does not _**have**_ to stay here. Say the word and we will do what we can to extricate him. Glaistig Uaine is a prisoner here, she should not be able to set conditions like that. You did what you had to do."

I stared at her for a moment, before shaking my head. "I don't want him here, but... answer me honestly, can the Protectorate afford to piss her off at this point?" When the other woman didn't respond right away, I continued. "More to the point, if he goes out there, what are the odds of _**someone**_ in power deciding they need a scapegoat for what happened to the PRT building and taking it out on anyone that happened to help Teacher, even if he didn't know what he was doing?"

Crystal blinked at that, staring at me. "You think Trevor's safer in here than he is out there?"

Shrugging, I glanced over my shoulder. "Let me put it this way, out there he'll probably have a whole bunch of frustrated, petty people looking for **someone** to string up and let the public take whacks at to make themselves feel better about what happened. In here, he's the personal assistant of someone that scares the pants off of the Triumvirate, who has a vested interest in keeping him alive because she wants me to keep coming back. I figure by the time he gets out in about a year, people will have moved on to the next thing, and the pain won't be quite so fresh. Plus, 'spent a year in the Birdcage' probably fits a lot of people's ideas of punishment."

Both of them thought about that, before Miss Militia seemed to look at me with new consideration. "I suppose you have a point." She sighed then. "Somehow, we're going to need to sort out the people in Teacher's block. Some of them were obviously more a willing part of this whole thing than others, and we need to figure out which is which."

Before either of them could say anything else, Glaistig Uaine entered the room, floating serenely. I couldn't see much of her expression, but she looked content. "_No, you will not." _

We all blinked that way at her. Crystal was the one who spoke. "What? I ahhh, I beg your pardon, your Highness. You mean you already know?"

"_No." _That chorus of voices replied easily. "_But determining the guilt or innocence of a corpse is unproductive, is it not?" _

It took Miss Militia only a moment to get what she meant. "You killed them?"

My eyes widened. "What—all of them?" I looked toward the Protectorate second-in-command. "I thought there were PRT people in there sorting them out."

"There were." Miss Militia's voice was hard, her hand tightening on her weapon.

Glaistig Uaine ignored the implied threat as though it meant nothing. "_Your people are unharmed. My quarrel belonged not with them, but with those who worked with the betrayer."_

"They wouldn't have just stood there and let you kill all those people." Crystal pointed out.

The Faerie Queen spared her barely a glance, before floating past on her way into the room."_No," _she agreed. "_They did not."_

All of us stared after the terrifying woman, who had apparently simply strolled into a prison block full of some of the most dangerous parahumans in the world, being guarded by enough troops to keep _**them**_ contained, and killed only the former while completely ignoring any attempt by the latter to stop her, to the point that it barely warranted a mention.

Gulping, I leaned closer to Crystal to whisper, "Like I said, I think Trevor's safer here."

Together, the three of us stepped into the hall and began to walk. We'd only gone about thirty feet to reach an intersection when Armsmaster's voice interrupted as he approached from the other hallway. "And you're absolutely sure he's nowhere in the prison."

That same computerized voice replied, "I—uhhhmmm... y-yes, sir. As much as I ummm... c-can be. It... I... I looked over all the footage and he was here for a few minutes, but-"

They rounded the corner then, emerging into the same intersection. I saw Armsmaster first, the man walking with grim determination, though I could make out the bruise on the exposed part of his lower face where Ethan had decked him.

Beside him walked a waif-thin girl, wearing some kind of headgear with a mirrored faceplate that covered the top half of her face, and an attached microphone that dipped from one corner toward her mouth which was clearly what created the computerized voice.

When she saw me, the girl stopped talking abruptly. I had time to wonder what was wrong, and why her figure looked so familiar, before the mirrored glass seemed to crack in half, each side sliding backwards and down into the back half of the headgear to expose her face.

I stood staring at the shocked face of the girl within. She had clearly once been quite beautiful, but was now pale almost to the point of looking sick. Her once gorgeous red hair was stringy and clearly hadn't been conditioned in a long time, and she wore nothing in the way of make-up. Oh sure, she'd probably still be considered pretty, but the dark circles under her eyes, the haunted look to them, and her obvious lack of confidence took away from the image that Emma Barnes had once projected.

For a moment, the two of us stood completely still, facing one another. Emma's mouth opened and shut before she found her voice, which was no longer digitized. "M-Madison? What are y-you..." Slowly, her gaze moved down to the rest of my outfit, staring blankly and uncomprehendingly for several seconds. "You... you're... you're..." Her hand moved to her mouth as she let out a shocked little gasp, her voice betraying her confusion even further. "Oh-oh my god. You're... A-and I... y-you..."

My own voice was flat, as I hid my surprise behind suspicion. "What... the hell... are you doing here?"

Wincing, Crystal stepped between us. "Emma here is Oversight. She's the one that shut down the Birdcage's defenses so that Murk could teleport us inside."

"Oversight..." I echoed, disbelievingly. "You... you did all this." Dinah's work? I wondered. Dinah's efforts paying off? I'd wondered why she wanted to keep Emma around, but if she had triggered with a powerful enough ability to shut down the Birdcage's defenses, that would definitely be reason enough.

"You're Tether." Emma repeated, voice dull with realization. "Oh my god. You're..."

I couldn't take this, not now. It was too much. "Damn it." I muttered, taking my mask and yanking it on.

Feeling confused and frustrated, I took a step to go around her. Emma's hand moved up to touch my arm. "M-Madison, wait... I—I ummm..."

My glower seemed to carry through the mask as I turned my head that way, because she shrank back. "Don't... fucking... touch me."

"I... I j-just wanted to say-"

"I don't care." I informed her flatly. "I don't care what kind of plan this is, what goal you or Dinah have. I don't care what game you're playing or what you're trying to accomplish. Just... just leave me alone. Don't touch me, don't talk to me, don't even... just... just back the fuck off. I'm not ready for this. I'm not ready to deal whatever bullshit you've got going on. Touch me again, and I swear to god, I'll put you on your ass."

Emma stood still and silent, her haunted gaze staring at me. It hurt, but I shoved that feeling away and turned on my heel to keep walking.

I really needed to get the hell out of this prison.

About an hour later, it was finally time to go. I stood in the cell block that Teacher had died in, almost in the exact same spot. Reach stood beside me, arms folded, while Ruin flanked me on the other side. The older girl still didn't look like she agreed with leaving the prison, but she hadn't argued with Glaistig Uaine's decision.

Hellhound stood glowering at me from across the room, surrounded by three of her thankfully normal sized pets. I was pretty sure she still hadn't forgiven me for hurting her dog back during the whole prison van escape thing.

The others were filing into the room, getting ready to head out of this damn place with the help of Mr. Hebert, who floated nearby, his darkness spreading out to cover one whole corner of the empty cell block.

I saw... something pass between him and Emma as she entered the room alongside Armsmaster, her faceplate back in position. His darkness grew deeper, spreading faster while he stared at the girl. Yeah, he obviously knew who she was. If possible, Emma herself shrank back even more, practically hiding behind the Brockton Bay Protectorate leader.

I hadn't seen Alexandria since her conversation with Pandora, who was currently inspecting one of the nearby cells with obvious curiosity.

Sam and Ethan approached, hand in hand. The latter reached out a fist to push against my shoulder. "You ready to get outta here,shrimp?"

"Don't call me that," I replied automatically and unthinkingly.

Chuckling, Sam released her husband long enough to step over and hug me. "Are you okay?" Apparently she'd heard about what happened with Emma.

I sighed and shrugged. "I dunno. I just want to go home."

"Time to go." Armsmaster announced, on cue. "Oversight, lower the teleportation defenses. Dragon's still reasserting her control after all the damage that Teacher's devices did."

"Y-yes, sir..." Emma said quietly. She seemed to focus for a moment before nodding. "Okay, they're down. We can—oh no!"

Armsmaster and Miss Militia both whirled on her, the former demanding, "What? What happened?"

"I—I'm s-sorry. I'm sorry." Emma stammered. "I d-didn't m-mean to. I swear. I didn't know they-"

"Spit it out." Armsmaster all but growled. "What just happened?"

Obviously cringing, Emma answered in a reluctant, frightened voice. "Th-they... ummm... some people just got out. "

Miss Militia shook her head, holding up a hand to stop Armsmaster from biting Emma's head off. "What do you mean, some people just got out?"

"I—I m-mean the second I took down the d-defenses, they teleported out. Like... l-like they were waiting for it. A-as soon as the defenses went down, two different groups-"

"**Two?!" **Armsmaster all but roared, his anger so obvious that Emma actually whimpered. "Who?" He demanded.

Gulping, Emma answered, "Ummm... it... it was Lu-Lung and three others with him. Ummm Ummm... Im-impasse, Feast, a-and... Oni Lee."

"And the other group?" Miss Militia asked, her voice tense even as she tried to keep Armsmaster as calm as possible.

"Marquis, m-ma'am." Emma cringed as she replied. "Marquis and his lieutenants, Spruce, Whimper, and Cinderhands."

Poor Armsmaster was all but quivering from the effort at quelling his rage enough to speak coherently. "How? How did they teleport out?"

"Ummm... Marquis had one of Teacher's teleportation devices. I d-don't know how. I didn't sense it until it powered up, and by then it was too late. And ummm... Lung... someone from the outside teleported his group out."

Armsmaster's hand went up to cover his mouth, rubbing his chin and goatee with obvious frustration as he growled. "We could have salvaged this. If we kept the rest of the prisoners locked down, we could've managed this without too many more problems. Now... now as soon as people find out those freaks are loose..."

"Ummm... M—Tether..." I froze as Emma addressed me, clearly reluctant to do so. "He... Marquis I mean, he said something for you just before the teleportation happened."

Everyone turned to stare at me, while I let out a low sigh. "What?"

A second later, Marquis' voice emerged from Emma's helmet. "Tether, thank you for the cooperation with my original request, but I believe I shall pass the message along to my daughter myself."

"His daughter?" Armsmaster was staring at me. "Do you want to explain what _**that**_ was all about?"

"Later." Miss Militia insisted. When he started to argue, she held up a hand. "I have been in this prison for over a month. I need a real shower, and I need a real bed. So do the others. Everything else can wait until _**later.**_"

"That's right." Ethan's own voice betrayed his obviously mounting tension. "We're going home. You can talk to her, to everyone, later."

Heaving a sigh, Armsmaster finally nodded. "Fine." He looked toward Mr. Hebert. "Murk, if you wouldn't mind?"

I waved a hand to catch Pandora's attention, letting the strange girl approach and stand nearby as the darkness began to envelop us.

Yet, even though I was finally getting out of this prison, and going home, I couldn't relax.

Marquis was loose. So was Lung. Both had every reason to hate each other, and each had some of the worst, most dangerous psychopaths in the world with them.

Brockton Bay was about to become a war zone.

**Interlude 14 – Emma**

_Three Days Ago_

Emma Barnes had believed that the most terrifying moment she would experience in her life had been when one of the random thugs who had yanked her out of her father's car through the broken window had pressed his knife against her face and ordered her to choose whether their newest gang member would cut away her eye, nose, mouth, or ears.

She had never, until that moment, been more convinced of her own helplessness and frailty. Her peaceful, perfect life, and the security it offered, had been shattered in the very same instant as the window of her father's car.

It was as if she had spent her childhood on a yacht, save, secure, and protected from the fear and loss that others experienced, only to be bodily thrown from that yacht, landing in a sea of pain and terror where no one cared how much money her parents made or how powerful they were.

Her daddy had been there. He had been worse than useless, calling her name with a kind of desperation that had only served to remind Emma of just how much trouble she was in, and how helpless he was to do anything about it.

No one else had helped her, no one else had stopped them. One person, and only one person, had actually stopped those thugs from doing anything they wanted to her.

Shadow Stalker. _**Sophia**_ had saved her, had stopped them. Of course, she hadn't known her name until later, or her philosophy. But she had _saved_ her. In the very moment where her idyllic, untouched life had shattered, Sophia had taken her arm and pulled her from that dark sea of impotent despair, into a new raft.

Her life, her trust in the world itself, had been broken. Sophia had given her something to believe in, a philosophy of winners and losers, of predator and prey, that allowed Emma to find some kind of _**meaning**_ in what had happened to her.

To give that up, to choose Taylor over Sophia, would have meant going back to the same girl she had been before that window had shattered. And _**that**_ would have meant, inevitably, being the same girl who would be pressed face down against the pavement, while a gang of psychopaths debated whether they should sell her to a sex farm. Not whether it was right, but simply whether they could get away with it or not.

Choosing Taylor would have meant choosing to be weak, pathetic Emma. It would have meant throwing away the girl who had saved her, who had taught her how to be strong.

Every day it had become easier to tell herself that it didn't matter, that Taylor meant nothing, that she was just that weak, that... pathetic. But the truth was that whenever she saw Taylor's sad, desperate expression, Emma remembered herself, lying on that pavement while her daddy screamed her name. It was _**that**_ weak, useless girl that Emma wanted to punish every time she hurt Taylor. _Fight back! _She wanted to scream every time Taylor just sat there and cried, because she saw herself sitting there, saw the tears in her own eyes, and **felt** the terror coming back.

Punishing Taylor had become less about who Taylor was, and more about what she represented: a life where Emma was weak.

She made her choice. Not just once, but every day. And every day it had become easier to tell herself that it was working, that she was strong, that she was better, that she would **never** feel that kind of terror again.

She had been right. The fear that those random thugs had been capable of had been nothing compared to what her life had become.

Riley was singing again, to the tune of the classic children's number. "Ohhh the itsy bitsy spiiider went through the tympanic membrane. Down comes the blood to wash that sucker out. Up comes the swab to push out all the blood. And the itsy bitsy spiiiider went in the glossopharyngeal nerve!"

A slight whimper escaped Emma as she lay on her side, staring at the stain on the nearby door, afraid to take her eyes off of it. The sound of Riley's singing was drown out by the high pitched whine of some kind of drill, accompanied by the wet splatter noise of blood and tissue spraying against the walls.

_Something_ leaked under the connecting door, and Emma covered her head with the blanket and felt her tears return.

"I just want to go home." She whispered to no one who would listen, no one who would care.

A hand touched her leg just then, and she jumped with a yelp.

"Emma." It was Dinah's voice. "It's time to go."

Slowly lowering the blanket, Emma stared at the younger girl. "Where... where are we going?"

There was no joy in the weak smile that Dinah gave her. "To your new life, one way or another."

"This is... my high school." Emma said dully, staring at the building in front of them. It was past one in the morning, meaning the school was dark and empty. Still, seeing it sent a throbbing pain through her heart. She wanted to be here. School had been fun. She had been important, had been a queen. "What are we doing here?"

"Go inside." Dinah's voice was soft, barely more than a whisper. "It's time for you to decide, Emma."  
>"Decide what?" Emma looked at the younger girl, then to Pandora, who stood half-covered by shadows. "What am I deciding?"<p>

Before answering, Dinah slowly stepped back out of the streetlight, letting the darkness fully envelop her. "Time to decide who you're going to be."

No more answers were forthcoming, no matter what Emma did or said. Finally, she was left with no choice but to walk forward. She expected to find the doors locked, but one of them opened even as she approached.

Another Pandora stood there, waiting for her in the school entrance. Her hand lifted to point to the nearest classroom. "Go, Emma-Person." She was never Emma-Friend, the way that the younger girl was Dinah-Friend. Hell, even _**Bonesaw**_ had become Riley-Friend. She was Person. Emma-Person.

Confused, and more than a little worried, Emma slowly made her way to the door that Pandora had pointed at.

Inside was what _had been_ a math classroom. The desks had all been cleared away from the middle of the room, leaving only a television, the screen displaying static.

After taking two steps into the room, Emma turned back to the door. "Hey, what am I supposed to-"

The door slammed shut with a bang that echoed through the room, and was matched by a near identical bang from behind her. Whirling, Emma saw that the television screen had come to life. Static had become two little girls standing on a grassy hill, while fireworks exploded in the sky behind them.

"Ooooh, look girls! Pretty. You see? Up there, right up there, here comes another one!" A female voice from behind the camera coaxed the pair

A dazzling blue and white display of pyrotechnics filled the air, while the two girls, barely eight years old, squealed with delight.

"Again! Again! Do it again!" The tiny little red-haired child pleaded, clapping her hands.

"They gotta reload, Emma." The taller, even skinnier little girl with the beautiful dark hair informed her friend. "Right, momma?"

There was a gentle chuckle from the woman behind the camera. "That's right, sweetie. They'll do another one as soon as—there we go!"

"Eeeee!" Both girls squealed, jumping up and down together.

"Red one!" The girl with the matching shade of hair looked back to the camera. "Did you see it, Aunt Annette? Did you see it?! Red, like me!"

Laughing, the woman with the camera assured her, "I saw it, Emma. Keep watching, you don't want to miss any, do you?"

Frantically, the little girl shook her head. "Nuh uh." She turned back to stare at the sky. "I'm never blinking again."

"Your eyes'll dry up and get all broke if you don't blink." The dark-haired girl cautioned.

"Worth it." The other child decided after a moment. "I don't wanna miss anything."

"It's okay." The girl with the dark hair put an arm around her. "If you lost your eyes, you could have one of mine."

The red-haired child returned the one-armed hug. "You'd do that?"

"Of course I would. You're my best friend."

The image on the screen froze like that, with the two little girls half-hugging as they stared up at the sky, fireworks exploding in the air.

For a moment, Emma stood still and silent, staring at it. A shudder tried to work its way out, but she shoved it back down and reached forward to turn the television off, but she stopped with her hand halfway there and stood, indecisive for a moment. Finally, she turned her back to it, leaving the image on the screen the way it was as she strode back to the door.

The door opened at her touch, and she walked back into the now dark hallway. "Okay!" She called. "This isn't funny anymore! You... you guys can stop. Whatever you're trying to-"

In mid-sentence, the locker directly in front of her popped open, some kind of light within illuminating a purple jacket that had once been pretty, before several colors of paint had been spilled on it. Most was random blotches, but on the very back, prominently displayed, was painted, 'Stupid Skank.'

The memory came easily. It had been Madison's idea, to take the jacket that Taylor liked so much, and spill paint on it. Sophia had added the stupid skank part, while daring Taylor after each and every letter to come and stop her. Emma herself had taunted the other girl, her former friend, telling her that if she didn't fight back, if she didn't even try to stop them, it must mean she agreed with it, that she really was a stupid skank.

Her hand lashed out, slamming the locker door shut with a bang and hiding the jacket from view. As soon as she did, a classroom door further down creaked open.

"No." Emma turned away from the open classroom, storming back to the entrance. "I'm not playing this game. I'm not doing this! Just leave me alone!" She shoved against the main door, but it remained stubbornly closed, resisting every effort she made to escape.

After a moment of pushing futilely at the exit, Emma turned on her heel and strode the other way. She had every intention of walking right past the open classroom, but just as she reached it, a voice within caught her attention, and she made the mistake of turning to look at what turned out to be another television screen.

"Emma! Eeeeeemmmma! Look up here. Look at the camera, sweetie."

On the screen, the little red-haired girl glanced up from the cake. She held a brand new stuffed bear in one hand, and pointed at the dessert on the table. "Daddy look! Princess cake!"

"Oooh, I see it, baby. How old are you today?"

She blinked up again, distractedly. "What?"

"How old are you, five?"

"Nooooo! I'm eight!"

"Eight, huh? Is that this many?" Three fingers appeared, held out in front of the camera.

"No, Daddy! It's... it's this many..." The girl used her free hand to hold up all five fingers, and tried to open her other hand for the remaining three, but doing so would have made her drop her new bear. "It's this... Taylor! Help!"

The skinny girl with the pretty hair leaned up into the camera's shot, holding three more fingers up against the other girl's five.

"Ohhhh," the man behind the camera teased. "I get it. You're five and she's three."

"No!" Both girls chorused in horror, before collapsing to the floor in a fit of giggles. They fed off one another. As one of them started to calm down, the other would snicker a little more, and then they would both howl.

The camera came forward a little, as the operator stood over the pair of happy, giggling girls, before the screen froze that way.

Spinning away from the screen, Emma took three steps down the hall when another locker opened right beside her. Hanging inside, again illuminated by tiny lights, was a flute.

It wasn't the same flute, of course. It couldn't be the one that had belonged to Taylor's mother, the one that Sophia had taken out of the girl's locker when she'd brought it to school in an attempt to feel safe and loved in the place that had become her living hell. But it was close enough. It was the same kind of flute, the same appearance, as the flute that had been Taylor's tiny little grasp at feeling like her mother was there to offer her some backup.

_I thought you were better than that, screwing with me on that level. _

_I guess you're wrong. Doesn't look like she's offering you any backup at all. _

The memory of the words came to mind, but she shoved them away, desperate to avoid actually accepting what had happened. That was how she dealt with everything. She moved forward, always forward. She'd chosen her path, had decided upon her direction. Nothing could be changed now.

Backing away from the flute, Emma's eyes closed. She missed a step, almost stumbling before she spun to run down the hall.

It continued that way. For every happy moment of bonding, of _true_ friendship without demand or ridicule, there was a locker with another reminder of just how terrible she had made Taylor's life become. One step after another, the memories came unbidden. Not only the ones that were being forced on her, but others, memories and thoughts that no one but she knew, driven to the surface now against every attempt to quell and suppress them.

Finally, everything stopped. Emma was left alone in the dark and silent hallway for almost a solid minute, hearing nothing but her own rapid breathing.

Then, with a slow, deliberate creak, another locker opened. This one was down the hall from her, the door blocking her view of the contents. It was... it was Taylor's locker. The locker that they had... the locker that she had...

"No." Emma turned away from it, eyes blinking rapidly.

Dinah was there, the dim light from the nearby exit sign casting an eerie green glow over her features. "What are you afraid of, Emma?"

"Just-" Emma's voice cracked a little. "Just leave me alone. What the hell do you want from me?"

"I want you to admit what you did."

"W-what?"

"I want you to say it out loud, Emma. All this time and you never said it out loud. Have you ever even thought it? Have you acknowledged it at all?"

"I..." Her head shook. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"She was your friend." Dinah's head shook, her disappointment somehow cutting. "Your best friend. Don't you owe it to her to admit it? To say it out loud?"

"S-Sophia was-"

"Sophia was nothing." Dinah interrupted.

"She saved my life!" Emma shot back, almost quivering. "She stopped them, she stopped those fucking monsters!"

Dinah's voice was quiet. "There was more than one kind of monster there that day, Emma. There was the kind that announce themselves with broken glass and open threats, the ones you see coming. And there was also the kind that never tells you what they really are, the kind that makes you think that they're your friend, just so they can twist you, change who you are inside. The kind of monster that makes you do things to your best friend that you can never take back."

"Sophia is—sophia... she's... she's..."

"Emma. Who was your real best friend? Who was there for you? Who didn't ask for anything from you except that you be there for her when she needed someone? Who loved you _**for you**_, not for who they could turn you into?"

"She—Sophia, she was... she was... my... my friend was..."

Dinah took a step closer. "Who?"

"I can't do this. I won't do this." Emma started to turn away, but Dinah caught her arms, holding her in a grip that was surprisingly tight for a twelve-year-old girl.

"Say it, Emma. Who was your best friend?"

She spat the words in a rush. "Taylor! Taylor, all right?! She was my best friend! She was... she was... and I... and I..." Her throat closed up, and she stopped talking.

"Say it, Emma." Dinah insisted.

"No." Her denial was a plaintive mewl. "No, please."

"Say it. Tell me. Tell yourself."

"Please don't make me. Please. Please, I can't. I c-can't do it. I c-can't say it. Please, I won't complain anymore. I w-won't try to es-escape. Please. J-just let me go. L-let me get out of here. D-don't... don't make me..."

Dinah's voice was less than a whisper, so quiet it might not even have been real. "Say it."

"I... I..." Emma's voice was hollow, empty now, devoid of false bravado. It was naked and raw. "I killed her." Her throat tried to close up, the dampness in her eyes making her blink rapidly. "I... I... killed... I killed my best f-friend... I..."

She was crying now, her tears falling freely as Dinah pulled her to the locker. Inside... was nothing. It was empty.

"Oh god... oh g-god..." Emma fell then, as Dinah stepped aside. She went to her knees in front of the empty locker, openly sobbing. "Please... please... no... I... I killed my best friend. I killed my best friend. I'm sorry."

Her head leaned forward, her hands coming up on either side of the locker while the tears that she had held back for months were finally released. "I'm sorry, Taylor. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." Her shoulders shook with the despair that had been buried so deep for so long that she had stopped recognizing it.

"I'm sorry, Taylor. I'm so, s-so sorry. I didn't mean it. I didn't me-mean it. Please... please no... please don't go. Please. I take it back. I t-take it back! Please, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Taylor, I'm sorry! Please..."

Head bowed, half slumped into the locker itself in her wretched anguish, Emma sobbed openly and brokenly.

Her mind began to drift then, a universe of infinite possibilities opening up before her to reveal a creature far beyond her ability to comprehend.

And even as that tiny spark within her ignited and began to explore what it could do, as Emma's own consciousness fled to a memory that was not its own and that she would not retain, her words remained, and would never again be forgotten or ignored.

"I killed m-my best friend... I k-killed... my best... f-friend."

"Oh god... Taylor..."


	15. Arc 15: Reconstruction

_**Notes: **Animeflunky – Yeah, the culmination of what the Faerie Queen is hoping for, when it finally comes to light, should prove... interesting, I hope. ;) _

_Clefspear – Thanks! Glad you're enjoying it. _

_SynesTheoretical – It was definitely emotional to write. I'm glad at least some of that came through in the reading. _

_RadicalTurnip – Thanks, I like doing my own thing rather than just rehashing canon, so it's good to hear that you like it as well. _

_HellKing666 – Seeing Tether-Madison interact with Skitter-Taylor would definitely be interesting. _

_reality deviant – Believe it or not, I was holding onto the finger line ever since Pandora gave Tether that thing. So hard to save it. _

_Starfox5 – If you want to see whether Madison gets over her initial reaction to Emma, read on. ;) _

**15.01**

Mr. Hebert was only responsible for the first teleportation jump, from the Birdcage to some kind of private waiting room nearby. Then he gave Emma another dirty look before bluntly announcing that he had fulfilled his part and was now done, before disappearing in a rush of shadows.

We used a different teleporter, one of the New York team, to get from British Columbia all the way to Brockton Bay. It took three more jumps, each more disorienting than the last, before we finally arrived in the teleportation receiving room in the PRT building.

By the time I had recovered from the brief but potent nausea, there was already trouble. Armsmaster had been trying to explain to Hellhound what had to happen before she could go, but Lindt wasn't having anything to do with it. She didn't trust him, or any of us really. It looked like she was about to start a fight, before the door opened on the other side of the room, letting Tattletale and Grue come in. They managed to calm the testy girl down before things could get too out of hand, explaining their pardons and that it wasn't a trick, the PRT wasn't about to throw her back in prison. Even hearing it from _**them**_ didn't seem to fully reassure the girl, who still looked like she wanted to bolt.

While that was going on, I turned to the nearby clone-girl. "Thanks for your help, Pandora. I... I couldn't have gotten out of there without you."

Her head tilted, and it looked like she was about to say something when I interrupted by stepping forward to hug her. Dinah wanted Pandora to learn morals, to learn about caring for people. As scary as she could be (and she could be downright terrifying), I wanted her to know that I cared about what happened to her. She had the potential to be a monster, but she chose not to be... as much of one as she easily could have been.

"You are touching us, Tether-Friend." Her voice remarked quietly after a moment.

"Err, is that bad?" I asked hesitantly while releasing her, a little bit nervous in spite of myself, given how little she had enjoyed Alexandria's touch.

She shook her head once, a motion as sudden and jerky as her nods tended to be. "No. We do not object. You have been useful, and you are a friend to us, and to Dinah-Friend."

"Well... as a friend, I need to tell you something." I took in a breath and then let it out. "But I'll tell you tomorrow, okay? I'll come see you guys tomorrow and tell you then. Just know that I know something now, something big, but I can't talk about it yet. I'm not lying to you, I'm not keeping it secret from you, but I'm not ready to talk about it. Is that... okay?"

Her eyes seemed to study me for a moment. "Is this knowledge something that will last until then?" I nodded, and she accepted that. "Then we will wait until tomorrow, Tether-Friend."

I let out a breath of relief. The last thing I'd wanted to do was something stupid like not tell Pandora about Marquis, and then have her find out some other way and start blaming everyone else for not telling her. That had, quite honestly, always infuriated me in movies and television, when something would go horribly wrong that could have been prevented with simple communication. Keeping important information away from someone 'for their own good' worked out so seldom that just thinking of doing it ought to have made a giant hand pop up out of thin air to start smacking the person having that particular brainstorm.

On the other hand, I hadn't officially reported where Bonesaw was, so maybe I deserved a vicious and repeated smacking too. But in that case, it wasn't about lying to one person to prevent them from finding out a secret that they might react badly to. It was about not deliberately messing up Dinah's attempts to actually rehabilitate someone as dangerous as Bonesaw was.

She seemed to be doing a good enough job with Pandora. The least I could do was not ruin her work. Maybe that was something that I would regret, but I firmly believed that I'd regret giving the Protectorate reason to jump down her throat in an attempt to grab Bonesaw even worse.

Yeah, I was aware that I was justifying it in probably the same way that those who lied to people 'for their own good' did. Apparently life was never going to have simple, straight forward answers, as much as I wanted it to.

Turning away from me while I was musing on that, Pandora focused on Emma. My skin crawled at the very thought that she knew who I was now. I couldn't help but wonder how she'd end up using it against me, as well as what kind of damage she was capable of now that she could apparently control machines and computers well enough to shut down the Birdcage's defenses. Frankly, the idea of someone like Emma having that kind of power kind of terrified me.

Then again, the idea of someone like I had been before would have been terrifying too. I had changed, _**maybe**_ Emma had too. But frankly, I was too tired and worn out to think about that right then. I just wanted to get out of here.

"We will take Emma-Friend away now." Pandora spoke up.

The name seemed to make the other girl jump a little. She looked that way, and I could sense her confusion even through the mirrored plate that covered the top half of her face. "Me?"

"Yes, Emma-Friend." Pandora repeated patiently. "We will take you back now. Dinah-Friend is waiting for us."

Armsmaster cleared his throat, and I had the terrified thought that he was going to try to stop Pandora. Images of carnage throughout the city, and planes dropping napalm while emergency sirens blared shot through my head.

Instead, he just spoke. "Tell Miss Alcott to call her parents again. They miss her, and they still don't understand why she can't come home to them."

Pandora seemed to regard him passively for a moment, clearly waiting to see if he was going to say something else. When he didn't, she gave that jerky, quick nod again. "We have given your message to Dinah-Friend. She has said that she will make such a call when it is safe for her to do so."

"What, you already talked to-" Armsmaster started before realizing. "Right, co-location." Rather than being creeped out, he sounded... envious? "All right, consider the truce continued. We'll back away from you as long as you keep to your side of it."

"Come, Emma-Friend." Pandora turned to walk away. "We will walk, and you will ensure that none of the attempts to follow or monitor us are successful."

No one even bothered to try to look innocent.

Emma shot a look toward Armsmaster. For a moment, I wondered if she would try to refuse to go with Pandora. After all, she'd seemed desperate to get out of that motel room before. I half-expected her to hide behind the man and tell Pandora to leave her alone.

Instead, she let out a soft sigh and started to walk away, trailing after the other girl. After a few steps, she looked back over her shoulder at me. "I'm sorry." She said, so quietly I wasn't sure that I'd actually heard her correctly. "I'm s-sorry for... for e-everything." Before I could respond to that, she kept walking. The pair left the room, heading for the building exit, and no one tried to stop them.

It was obvious that no one quite loved the idea of letting that particular situation continue, but it was better than any alternative, most of which involved pissing off Pandora. It was a fragile truce, and no one who actually understood the situation wanted to risk breaking it, no matter how little they liked it.

Besides, Emma and Pandora had been there under a flag of truce, not too unlike Endbringer battles. To violate that wouldn't have just been stupid for the whole 'unstoppable biological weapon' thing, but also for the damage it would do to the Protectorate's ability to make further deals in the future.

Once those two had left, I turned to take hold of Armsmaster and Crystal, tugging both of them away from the others. Miss Militia's words aside, the threat to Amy wouldn't just _wait_ for us to feel refreshed. "Amy's in danger." I said in a low voice. "Marquis says he's her father, and I think he really, really wants a daddy-daughter reunion. " I focused on Crystal then. "You need to find her and tell her who he is, if she doesn't already know."

Crystal's mouth fell open. "Marquis is... oh... god damn it, Aunt Carol."

I blinked at the mention of her deceased relative. "Uhhh..."

"Never mind." She shook her head. "A lot of other things just make more sense now. I'll find Amy and talk to her." She squinted at me then. "If he's Amy's father, doesn't that mean-"

"Yeah." I nodded. "I'm gonna talk to Pandora, try to explain things."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Armsmaster asked.

My nod turned emphatic. "Better than waiting for her to find out some other way, so she blames us for not telling her the truth."

"Right." He grimaced at that thought. "Could be bad. Look, just... be careful. You have no idea what kind of people are up in arms about this whole situation. Every god damn day I have to tell some other paper-pusher that we're not mounting a rescue mission. Dinah's parents don't get it, even with her telling them herself. The mayor's got a bug up his ass, and everything's just..." He sighed. "Just keep her under control."

Briefly, I wondered how worked up those same people would be if they knew that Bonesaw was there too. "Err, yeah, I'll be careful."

Penance spoke up from where she had been standing by Reach. "I'm taking Cassie home. Theo... well, there's a lot to tell you about."

I saw the younger girl, still hidden behind her infiltrator costume, shrink back, clearly nervous about what had happened before she took the express trip into the Birdcage. When she glanced toward me, I gave her a thumbs up, not wanting to make things worse by talking about it out loud. All I said was, "Good luck."

"We, meanwhile..." Sam announced, looking toward Ruin. "Need to take care of some other details."

So, in spite of Ethan's pronouncement that we would deal with everything after we had some rest, it took much longer to actually leave. The fact was, the powers-that-be weren't exactly eager to officially release Ruin back into the world. Sure, going into the Birdcage had been her choice, but there had been a good reason for it, and she _had_ killed people, however accidentally. And apparently it was difficult to impress upon the people in the suits with the pens that signed these sort of things the danger of annoying Glaistig Uaine by going back on a deal. They figured she was in the Birdcage, so what damage could she do?

Idiots.

Other people who had done terrible things _on purpose_, like Purity, had been forgiven, of course. But she had joined the Protectorate. Ruin had no such interest. In fact, she was afraid going into that sort of thing would actually do more harm than good, considering how easy it would be for her to get into a situation where she accidentally spoke.

It took so long to dot all the i's and cross all the t's, that by the time they had finished up, I was curled up on a bench outside of the conference room where all this was going on, wearing street clothes taken from the PRT gift shop. I'd drifted off for awhile when I finally felt a hand brush my shoulder. Opening my eyes, I found Sam there. "Hey, ready to go home?"

Sitting up, I yawned. "I need to call Mars." I hadn't wanted to do it from inside the building, considering how easy it was to be overheard, even if you didn't actually see anyone around. I'd also thought about calling Dennis, but it was late enough that I didn't want to wake him up. I'd talk to everyone the next day. Marissa, however... she needed to know I was all right, as soon as possible.

Ethan, standing over next to Ruin as he shuffled through a few papers, remarked, "Or you could just wait until we get back so you can talk to her in person."

That made me blink. "Huh? Wait, she's... at your house?"

He glanced up and smiled slightly at me. "You didn't think we'd just leave her in the dark when we were going in to get you, did you? We let her know and told her to stay in our place until we brought you back. That was pretty much the only way she'd agree not to come with us."

My mouth opened and shut, as I stared at him. "You... you talked to her... you let her know..."

Sam's arm went around my shoulders. "Of course we did. She cares about you, a lot. We couldn't just ignore that and let her keep thinking the worst. Besides, you care about her too, don't you?"

I nodded quickly. "I—I do. I care about her a lot. I just... I didn't expect you to... I just figured you guys and her were separate and that... it was wrong to..." I trailed off, still blinking as I came to terms with the fact that my guardians and my girlfriend had been talking without me there.

"Hey," Ethan brought the stack of papers up to lightly swat against my face. "She's important to you so she's important to us. Besides, we had to make sure you were making the right decision to trust her."

I hesitated at that, shifting my weight before asking, strangely nervous considering everything I had just been through, "So, ummm... what do you think?"

Grinning, Ethan gave me a shrug. "Well, I for one think you're a pretty lucky girl." When Sam leaned out a foot to kick him, he danced backward. "Hey, I said 'pretty' lucky! Just not quite as lucky as me."

"Nice save." Sam remarked dryly before looking toward the silent Ruin. "Ready to get out of here, Hunter?"

"Hunter?" I echoed, glancing that way. "That's your real name?"

She nodded, and Ethan confirmed, "Hunter Pritt, apparently. Ruin's not bad though, one name. Like Madonna. Or, well, you know... Scion."

"We'll stick with Hunter." Sam said pointedly.

While we walked outside, they explained the agreement that everyone had come to concerning Hunter/Ruin's release. Apparently it both helped and hurt that everyone was still reeling from the destruction of the national PRT headquarters. It helped in the fact that the proper channels only went up to the state level at the moment, so there was actually slightly less red tape to cut through. It hurt in the fact that the bureaucrats at the state level were _**swamped**_ and they had initially reacted to the request to legally allow a former Birdcage resident, whether she had chosen to be there or not, to leave by staring at Ethan and Sam as though they were insane.

Luckily, those two weren't the only ones making the request. Armsmaster and Miss Militia had apparently both spoken up to say that this was the best way to do things, regardless of her history (pointing out that she was a bargaining chip of Glaistig Uaine had apparently helped with at least one of the decision makers) or her powers. Finally, however, it had been the brief, harried appearance of Alexandria that convinced them. She had stopped by for about sixty seconds to tell the group of suits that they should allow the release, using a variation of the system that allowed former villains to avoid prison in exchange for services.

That... surprised me, honestly. Why should Alexandria care about something like this? It didn't... really concern her, did it? Don't get me wrong, I **appreciated** the help, but I wondered where her support had come from.

In the end, even with Alexandria's voiced support, it had taken several things together to make the release work. First, Ruin had to sign a form agreeing to cooperate with any procedure deemed appropriate by a panel of parahuman medical professionals and tinkers that would attempt to control the damage her voice did when she didn't want it to. Second, she had to agree to be on retainer for the Protectorate, to assist in any situation which her particular talents could conceivably help with. Third, Ethan and Sam had to take personal responsibility for her, meaning that Ruin would be living with us. Fourth, she was considered to be on probation for the duration of her prison sentence (forever), and at any point that a panel decided she was too dangerous, she would be put right back inside the Birdcage, or eliminated (yes, it actually said eliminated) in order to ensure the safety of the civilian population. Essentially, she had what amounted to half of a kill order ready for five signatures to make it official the second they decided she was more trouble than she was worth. To facilitate that, she had to wear an ankle monitor that would constantly track her location just in case.

In a lot of ways, it was extreme. Not that it was so easy to blame them. Ruin, or Hunter as I really needed to get more accustomed to thinking of her as, was _**dangerous. **_I liked her, what I knew of her anyway, but she was capable of killing a lot of people very quickly and very easily without actually meaning to. A mistake, an exclamation of surprise, could result in the death of a lot of people. It was like someone walking around that could sneeze and wipe out a nearby Cub Scout , it wasn't fair or right that she'd ended up with the power that she had, but that didn't mean the people who wanted her kept away from civilians were exactly wrong. It was one of those moral questions without a satisfactory answer.

The moment that we stepped out of the building, Ruin stopped walking. She stood frozen, staring up at the night sky.

Stars, I realized belatedly. She was staring at the stars. "Ru—Hunter?" I asked after a moment. "How long were you in the Birdcage?"

Without looking away from the sky, she held up three fingers.

"Three..." I swallowed. "Three years? You were in there for three years?"

She nodded faintly, still entranced by the stars.

I turned my attention to Ethan, who looked mad enough to storm back in the building and start screaming at the people who had locked up a teenage girl for three years alongside the worst psychopaths in the world for what hadn't been her fault.

"I swear to god..." He muttered. "I am going to find the list of every single prisoner they've still got in that hellhole, and if there's anyone else that shouldn't be there..."

Sam put a hand on his arm. "Later, Ethan. Let's get out of here."

"Right." He let out a breath and pointed. "You guys can ride in the back of the pickup. That way, ahh, you can see the sky on the way."

I saw a slight smile cross Hunter's face, before she lowered her gaze and nodded in agreement. She joined as as we walked across the lot, heading for the truck.

On the way, I couldn't help but think about what Glaistig Uaine had said. She thought that I could help Ruin, that I could somehow _repair_ her power, or whatever. That was as insane as her faerie beliefs, wasn't it?

She'd talked about the three sisters, the fates, who controlled humankind's destiny. Somehow, for whatever reason, she'd pulled me into that delusion. She thought I was important, that I was one of the three. What had she said? That I could... set right what had been done in the name of tests. What tests?

Most importantly, what did she hope to accomplish? What was Glaistig Uaine's goal with all of this?

And if it turned out that I didn't like that goal, was there a damn thing I could do about it?

**15.02**

My preoccupying worries about what Glaistig Uaine actually wanted out of me were derailed as soon as we got back to Ethan and Sam's house. I'd barely hopped over the side of the truck bed and dropped to the driveway below before I found myself abruptly enveloped in a hug so tight I couldn't breathe through it.

"Uuuulp." I managed, the force of the hug pulling me up onto the tips of my toes considering our height difference. "You people keep trying to choke me to death. I thought you were **glad** to see me."

The hug let up only a little bit, as Marissa leaned back so she could stare down at me. I could see the worry in her eyes, the desperate hope that I really had escaped that place, and the fear that this was only a dream, that she would wake up and find that I was still gone.

"Mads." Her voice was soft, so tender that it made me shiver. "Madison. You're okay. You're all right." She was clearly reassuring herself, as she hugged tighter for another second, nearly choking me again.

"I'm fine." I smiled a little, trying to make her feel better. "See? Nothing broken, nothing missing, everything's just-" I had killed a man. Even if it hadn't technically been me, even if Pandora had done the killing, I had facilitated it. I had requested it. I was responsible. "-just... fine."

She caught the hesitation, the look in my eyes. "What's wrong, Maddy? You're..."

"I'll talk about it later." I promised, even though I didn't want to. "I... just want to focus on being here right now. With you."

I saw her blush slightly, before she leaned down and touched her lips to mine for a moment. It felt... beyond good. I wanted more, but she pulled back enough to whisper, "I missed you."

"I wasn't gone that long," I pointed out quietly.

"Too long," she insisted. "Way too long." Then she kissed me again, and I lost myself for a minute.

We finally pulled back at the sound of Sam clearing her throat from the nearby porch. "Why don't you girls come inside? You can sit on the couch and talk for a bit until Madison's ready to sleep."

I looked around at that, realizing that Ethan and Hunter had already gone in while we had been... occupied. Blushing, I glanced toward Mars. "I, uhh, guess we should, huh?"

Her hand cupped my face briefly, sending little electric tingles through me before she nodded. "Yeah, let's go inside." She turned, sliding her hand down to interlace our fingers before tugging me with her.

By the time we got inside, Ethan was in the kitchen with Hunter, fixing food and showing her where things were. He called out from there, "You girls hungry?"

My stomach suddenly rumbled, reminding me of how relatively little I had eaten. Flushing at the noise, I glanced toward Marissa. She was clearly trying not to giggle, the corners of her mouth twitching up, while tiny little snickers escaped her.

"I think that's a yes." Sam, who had clearly noticed the same thing, called into the kitchen. She didn't even _attempt _to hide her amusement. "Go on, girls. Take the couch. We'll bring something out."

Sitting next to Marissa, I brought her hand up and squeezed it. "I... I'm glad you're here. I'm _**surprised**_ that you're here, but I'm glad. I... I missed you too."

"I had to know what was going on." She explained, putting one arm around me to tug me back against her as we half-laid on the couch. Her voice was soft, but I could hear the relief in it. "I was afraid that... " She trailed off, not wanting to put words to what had obviously been a worry that I would never get out of the Birdcage.

"I'm sorry." I turned my head a little while leaning back against her to kiss Marissa's cheek. "I... should tell you about all the stuff that happened, but right now I kinda just want to be here with you."

The arm that she had wrapped around my stomach tightened a little, as she whispered, "I do too."

We sat there like that, together, until Ethan brought out food. By that time, I was barely conscious. My growling stomach pushed me enough to clean most of the plate, before I let my head slump back against Marissa's shoulder.

"Sleepy?" She asked, amusement and affection obvious in her voice.

I was trying to think up a good response, but before I could, my eyes drifted closed. I was out like a light, safe and comfortable as I lay in my girlfriend's arms.

Sometime late the next morning, I woke up in my own bed. Apparently someone had moved me during the night. It took me a moment to realize that it was the smell of pancakes that had woken me up. Even though I'd eaten some the night before, I'd been too tired and distracted to really fill up or enjoy it, so my stomach immediately started bouncing up and down and demanding attention.

"Yeah, yeah." I grumbled, rolling out of bed. I was still dressed in touristy sweatpants and tee-shirt from the PRT gift shop, so I took a moment to grab new clothes before half-stumbling into the shower.

God it felt good not to have to shower as quickly as humanly possible while constantly looking over my shoulder. Even though Marquis had been good enough to give us privacy, showering in that cell block had been nerve wracking and stressful. Now, I could relax and just daydream.

I spent half an hour in the shower, before finally getting ready and going downstairs, my stomach practically dragging me along like an eager dog on the end of a leash. "Mmmm, you've been busy, Ethan." I said while coming into the kitchen.

Sitting at the table, her own plate half finished, Sam tried for a pout. "You say that like it's completely impossible that I could be the one cooking."

"Not impossible." I said quickly. "It's just... umm..." I turned toward Ethan at the stove. "Could you give me food so I have an excuse to not keep talking?"

Poor Sam shoved another forkful into her mouth before muttering, "Someday I'm gonna make something delicious, and you'll both be sorry."

"Well yeah," Ethan remarked while loading a plate and handing it to me. "You'd be freaked out too if you woke up in a Bizarro World like that." He dodged the shoe she threw at him and winked at me. "Maybe in Bizarro World, Puppy knows how to throw straight too."

The second shoe nailed him.

We ate breakfast, while I explained some of the things I needed to do. I had to visit the Wards and let them know what was going on. Then I needed to see Pandora and talk to _her_ about Marquis. Then I planned on going over to see Marissa and Jess.

"Hey," Sam's hand found my arm. "It's okay to slow down a little bit. You just got out of that... horrible place."

I swallowed, raising both shoulders in a shrug. "I know. But... Pandora needs to know the truth, and the Wards are my friends. I _**want **_to talk to them."

"Okay..." She still looked concerned. "Just... take it easy, okay? No fighting, no patrol. We already called Colin and told him that you're off schedule for the next week."

I blinked at that. "Errr, you're grounding me?"

"Hell no." Ethan took the seat on the other side. "Not grounding. We want you to have fun. Go visit your girlfriend, have a date or something. Hang out. Be a teenager, Madison. It's not completely up to you to save the world. Take a load off for a few days. You're allowed to take some time off."

"What about Sam?" I asked pointedly. "She was there longer than me."

"Pfft, I already told Armsmaster to get stuffed for the week last night." Sam shot back at me. "We're gonna have fun this week. No stress, no super villains."

I looked back and forth between them, then let out a breath. "Okay, no... patrol for a week. I... I guess I could use the break."

"Good." Sam gave me a brief side-hug. "We've got some other ideas for what we can do for our little vacation. But if you need to take care of those things first..."

I nodded at that. "Yeah, I... I really do." Swallowing past the thick knot that crept into my throat at how understanding and... and caring they were being, I finally managed, "Thanks, guys."

"Eh," Ethan shrugged, grinning at me again. "You're all right for a pint-sized little brat. We might as well make sure you don't spontaneously combust from all the stress."

As I stepped through the entrance to the Wards room, I was yet again enveloped in a tight hug. This one, at least, came from someone slightly smaller (though not all that much considering our age differences) than I was.

"Hey, Missy." I returned the hug to the youngest, yet paradoxically most experienced, team member. "Did you keep the others in line while we were gone?" I nodded toward where the rest of the team save for Reach were.

Her eyes rolled as she released me. "I did the best I could. Everyone else was freaking out."

Dennis slid past her to take his own hug. "I seem to remember a certain space-bending little girl threatening to trap the entire top floor of the PRT offices unless they admitted what happened to our teammates and started doing something about it."

"Teammates, huh?" I asked with a glance around Dennis at the other girl, stressing the plural.

Missy met my gaze and nodded. She'd clearly remembered what I'd said before about being worried for both Cassie and me the last time we'd disappeared. "Yeah, teammates." Apparently she, at least, had come to a decision about Reach while we had been gone.

I finished hugging Dennis, then Chris when he came forward. "You guys were really worried about us, huh?"

"Hell yeah," Chris confirmed. "Vicky told Piggot herself that if they didn't stop lying about where you two were, she was gonna fly straight to the nearest news station and tell them the whole story."

"Even the Nazi doesn't belong in there." Glory Girl remarked from where she was standing.

It sounded like she was trying to make a joke, but I still didn't like it. Releasing Chris, I turned to her, putting a finger up. "Stop it, Vicky. Don't call her that anymore." When the other girl opened her mouth, I shook my head. "Just stop it, please. Look, Cassie jumped into the friggin_**Birdcage**_ to save me. That was her choice. She **chose** to go to the worst prison in the world, with no guarantee that she'd ever get out, just to help me. So give the Nazi thing a rest, okay? Just... stop. She did things because that's what her family did. It's not really that different than you becoming a super-hero because that's what _**your**_ family did. She's one of us now. She's my friend. When you insult her, you're insulting my friend."

Victoria's mouth opened and then shut, before a slight blush crossed her features as she nodded. "Right, fine. If it bothers you that much, I'll stop." She hesitated before asking, "She... really did choose to go in there then?"

I nodded. "Yeah. She really did."

Chris whistled low. "Wow. I dunno if I could've done that." He winked at me. "Not that I don't like your company and all, but maybe not that much."

I made a face at him, before turning back to the older girl. This time, I stepped over to hug her as well. "Did Crystal talk to you and Amy?"

She sighed at that, slumping even more than before after returning the hug. "Yeah." Her voice was quiet. "Amy's not taking it very well. She's... she's staying with Aunt Sarah and Uncle Neal in the Protectorate building for now, and they're talking about giving her an escort."

Looking back and forth between us, Missy frowned. "What for? What happened?"

"That should probably wait until Cassie gets here. She was there, so she can help explain it."

"So you're not gonna tell us about what happened until she gets down here?" Chris let out a long, put-upon sigh. "Man, why did we even bother to show up and meet you?"

I kicked at his leg for that, before blinking at the corner of the room where his work table was. "Wow, you've been busy. What's all that stuff?"

Glancing over his shoulder, Chris shrugged. "I'm not sure. It's not mine."

"That," Dennis put in from where he was standing. "would be our newest member's first project."

"New member?" I echoed in surprise, taking another look that way before making myself pout as I teased, "You guys were replacing us already? Wow, I feel the love."

Chris rolled his eyes. "Hey, he's a tinker. Sounds like they're getting ready to replace _**me**_, doesn't it?"

"Ooh, good point." I smiled sweetly at the boy, wiggling my fingers at him in a wave. "Been nice knowing you, Kid."

He scowled and stepped on my foot, before continuing while I yelped. "I was just letting him use my stuff to get some of those tinker urges out until he gets his own set-up."

"That's where Cassie is, actually." Dennis put in. "Upstairs with the new guy and Penance."

"Penance?" I blinked a couple times at that. "Why are they with—ohhh." I realized belatedly. "Wait, this isn't uhh, Theo Anders, is it?"

"You already know him?" Victoria asked, curious.

Coughing, I shrugged, not wanting to give Cassie's personal life away. "Ahh, I never met him, but Reach... mentioned him. They live together, right?"

Dennis studied me for a moment. "Yeah... he triggered after she disappeared. Apparently he was really worried about her." The tone of his voice made it clear that he knew there was more I wasn't saying.

I was saved from having to respond to that by the door opening behind me. Turning, I saw Cassie enter, alongside a slightly overweight boy who looked almost terrified to be where he was. I couldn't tell if that was more because of the Wards room, or because of his proximity to the girl he had kissed.

"Theo!" Chris stepped that way, giving his fellow tinker a broad smile. "Hey, man. You get all sorted out up there? They get you a full lab and everything?"

The other boy shrugged. "Yeah. I... guess I'm... one of you now. Sort of."

"Hi." I stepped that way and extended a hand. "I'm Madison. I guess I'm the one Cassie went to save."

His hand was clammy as he shook mine, his nervousness obvious. "Uhh, hi. Hi. I... I'm... ummm, I'm glad you're alright."

I smiled at that, resisting the urge to point out that he was probably even happier about Reach. Cassie noticed my expression and shot me a brief threatening look, until I simply nodded. "Yeah, I'm glad we both made it out alright." Unable to resist the grin that came, I asked, "So what's your cape name?"

He looked confused by the attention, and unsure of how to act. Wiping his sweaty hands on his pants, the boy mumbled something.

"Hey," Cassie nudged him with her elbow, hard. "You gotta speak up, Theo. Teammates, remember? No one's gonna bite your head off."

"Aid." He repeated, blushing. "I... guess my name is Aid." He looked toward the table where the seemingly random collection of parts were stacked. "I... umm... I make things that help people."

"Things that help people?" I echoed, tilting my head curiously.

He nodded, his voice still hesitant and slow, but with obvious interest. Apparently, getting a tinker to talk about their projects was one nearly certain way to make them open up. "Like... rescue drones, or... fire suppressants, or just... that sort of thing." Even then, he seemed unsure of himself, hesitant about the whole thing. It was like he was afraid that he'd say one wrong thing, and everyone would laugh at him. Or worse.

"Hey," I smiled at the boy. "Ideas for rescuing and helping people instead of hurting them are pretty rare, I think. Maybe you can teach Chris how to build something other than guns."

Kid Win made an annoyed, scoffing sound at that. "And just what amazing bit of technology have _**you**_ built, Little Miss Judgy?"

"So," Dennis interrupted, nodding toward me. "Maddy here was gonna tell us what happened in that place, and why Panacea's suddenly under lock and key."

Glancing toward Reach, I nodded slowly. "Yeah, I guess we should talk about that."

**15.03**

A couple hours later, after a thorough debriefing with the other Wards, including the newest member, I tapped on the window of Dinah and Emma's room at the old motel after taking a quick glance around to make sure no one was watching. Thankfully, the neighborhood was so run down that there just weren't that many sober people to keep an eye out for.

The window slid open, and Dinah remarked, "It's okay. Panda made sure you weren't followed."

"She did?" I asked with a reflexive glance over my shoulder while ducking into the room.

"There's three of her keeping an eye on the neighborhood." Dinah gave a faint smile. "That's why there's almost nobody out there. All the gangs got scared off and moved."

"Or died," I added, pointedly. I knew exactly what, or rather, who had driven the gangs away.

She nodded once. "Or died." Her eyes, much more... calculating than a twelve-year-old girl's ought to be, gave me a once over. "Are you all right?"

"I'll be okay." I looked toward the empty bed on the other side of the room. "Where's Emma?"

"She ummm..." Dinah looked a little uncomfortable. "She thought you'd rather talk to Panda without her around. So she went up to the roof to watch TV."

I blinked at that. "She has a television on the roof?"

The younger girl smiled faintly. "No, but she can feel any machine or device within a couple blocks. If it has a lens, she can see through that lens, and if it's got a screen, she can 'see' that like an image in her head. So if she focuses on one television somewhere within her range, she can watch that way without being anywhere near it."

"Did you know she was going to get this kind of power?" I knew she had some kind of precognitive ability. Coil's notes had been clear enough on that, and her actions after escaping with Pandora had only made it more obvious. I didn't know how powerful she was, but I had a feeling it had a listing of 'pretty damn very', and she'd been keeping Emma for a reason.

"I... knew she'd be important." Dinah turned from me to the nearby computer screen and leaned over to hit a few keys. "I knew that she could be better than she was, and that having her here, having her trigger, made the numbers better."

"Made the numbers better?" I frowned at that. "What numbers, exactly?"

After letting out a low breath, she looked back to me. "It's hard to explain right now. But the point is, everything works out better if Emma's with us. Just like Panda."

"And Riley?" I asked, with a look toward the connecting door that led to the other room.

"And Riley." Confirming that with a nod, Dinah turned the chair around and offered it to me. "And a few more. But that can wait."

"A few more?" I raised an eyebrow while taking the offered seat. "Dinah, you're already holed up here with two of the most dangerous parahumans in the world, and a brand new parahuman who could probably do almost as much damage on her own, if not more, considering how much of the world depends on technology. How many more ultimate threats do you need?"

She smiled innocently. "Just three."

I stared at her. "Six. You want six of the most dangerous capes in the world. What the hell are you trying to do?"

Her gaze flicked down toward the floor as she murmured, "It's more about what I'm trying to stop." For just a second, her dismissive, completely in control expression vanished, and I thought she looked... scared. She looked like the frightened, completely out of her depth little girl she should have been.

Concerned at that, I leaned forward. "Hey, are **you** all right? What do you mean, what you're trying to stop? Talk to me, Dinah. You're not alone. It's not your job to fix everything."

Her smile returned, faint though it was. "Funny how you're the one telling me that."

Before I could respond, the connecting room door opened, and a monster from the worst nightmares of someone with _**much**_ more terrifying dreams than I tended to have stepped into view. The chest cavity of the body was wide open, split from the neck down to the waist so that all of the most of the various organs and veins were in plain view. Small white tubes had been run through the body, and I could see blood and likely other fluids pumping through them, alongside actual wires and what I swore looked like some kind of battery.

And worst of all, right around where the lungs should have been, was a _**face**_, half covered in blood, and grinning absolutely maniacally. "Wheeee!"

I screamed, okay? Anyone would have. I squealed like a little girl and threw myself backwards off of the chair to the floor, nearly cracking my head against the wall. "Aaaaaaaahhhh fuck! What the hell?!" My eyes were wide, my heart hammering loudly (and disturbingly in synch with the heart that I could **see** in that open chest cavity.

That blood-covered face focused on me finally, and lit up with delight. "Tether! You came to see me!"

Bonesaw, I realized belatedly. Or Riley, rather. She was... standing... _**inside**_ of one of the Pandoras, her body nestled inside the other girl's like it was some kind of... suit.

My eyes closed behind the mask, and I tried not to throw up. "Wh-what... what are you doing?"

"Practicing!" I heard a wet squelching noise, and squeezed my eyes shut even tighter. "I can make her walk now, and shake hands! See?"

Knowing I'd regret it, I opened my eyes to look, jumping and letting out another yelp. The Pandora/Riley combination was right in front of me, the main body extending a hand toward me in greeting.

"Y-you're... inside... Pandora..."

"Yup!" Now that I was closer, I could see more of Riley inside the other body. The organs had clearly been shuffled around, removed, or resized to make room so that the medical tinker could literally stand inside it, clearly acting like a flesh and blood version of one of those mascot suits. Clearly this Pandora was slightly larger than the 'normal model', to accommodate the additional figure, though the change wasn't that pronounced. Obviously they had done a lot of work already to make it possible for the bio-tinker to ride inside the body without making it too obvious.

Seriously, what the _fuck_ was Dinah trying to accomplish here?

Riley made the arm shake up and down again. "Hey, don't be rude. We wanna shake hands!"

I squeezed my eyes shut again, trying to restrain at least the worst of my shudder before slowly lifting a hand to set into Pandora's.

Riley made it shake firmly. "And what a wonderful pleasure it is to meet you, my lady." Her voice dropped to an apologetic whisper. "I haven't figured out how to make the mouth talk yet, sorry. Maybe next time! But you've gotta tell me when you're coming. I almost didn't finish your surprise in time!"

Pulling my hand back as soon as she let me, I asked, in a voice that was more whimper than I meant it to be, "A... s-surprise? You got me a surprise...?"

"O'course I did, silly! It's right in the other room!"

"Uhh, Riley, maybe it'd be easier to visit with Tether if you took a break from Pandora-piloting?" Dinah pointed out, as mildly as if she'd just reminded the other girl to wash her hands before eating.

"Mmmkay!" Riley chirped cheerfully. "Lemme get out of this and I'll... errr, lessee..." She continued in a sing-song voice while clearly trying and failing to extricate herself from the other body. "My ankle bone's connected to her shin bone, my knee bone's connected to her... hold on, just lemme twist this way and... maybe if I bend..." She twisted a little bit, and I had to force Ethan's pancakes to stay where they were. "Awww fiddlesticks, I'm stuck." Her head tilted upward. "Hey sis, little help?"

Pandora's eyes, which had been closed, opened and she spoke. "As you wish." The body completely dissolved into a light fog, taking all traces of itself (including all of the blood that had coated Riley's face) away before reforming into an intact body.

I leaned closer to Dinah while they were getting situated and whispered, "Sis?"

She shrugged back at me. "I guess aunt didn't really work."

"Present!" Riley spun on her heel and ran into the other room. "You'll just love it, I know you will!"

"Oh boy..." I said weakly, squinting at Dinah. "A present, just for me."

While the other girl was gone, I focused on Pandora. It was impossible to tell that, less than a minute ago, her body had been split open and serving as a flesh-mech for another person. "Are you all right?"

"We are well, Tether-Friend. Riley-Friend has attempted to do nothing that we have not allowed."

I started to respond to that, when the door swung open again as Riley came rushing back in. "Got him!"

"Him?" I echoed, unable to keep all the nervousness out of my voice at the worry of what she might have brought me. I thought of cats that brought dead birds or mice to their owners, expecting praise.

Somehow, I envied those cat owners. At least they could be fairly certain the birds and mice were dead on delivery. Whatever Riley had was probably going to get up and start crawling around again.

Practically skipping up to me, she held her hands out. In her cupped palms, I saw what looked like a miniature version of those mechanical spiders she liked to use. This one was about the size of my cell phone. "This is Jalopy. He's for you!"

My mouth opened and then shut, as I stared. "Err, for... for me?"

"Uh huh!" Her head bobbed up and down eagerly. "Hold out your arm."

I cast a quick glance toward Dinah, who nodded, before sighing as I obediently (yet reluctantly) lifted my arm and held it out for the bio-tinker. I tried not to let it shake too much.

"Jalopy," Riley spoke toward the little spider-bot while setting it on my arm. "Camouflage mode!"

Eight tiny little mechanical legs danced up the arm of my costume toward my wrist, before the thing settled down there. Its legs retracted, and the thing shifted around and out, forming what looked like an ordinary metal wrist band there, just below my gauntlet.

"What... errr, what is it?" I squinted at the little spider-bot... wristband... thing.

"He's your new bodyguard!" Riley announced. "Well, bodyguard, communicator, friend, whatever you want him to be, really. See, he'll obey your orders as long as you say his name first. He's a lot tougher than he looks. He's got a flashlight, he can fix stuff like computers, and lots of other neat things. Oh, and he's got a little bit of Pandora in him, so if you need to ask _her_ for help again, or just talk, you can! You just have to say 'talk to Pandora', and then say whatever you want to say. Plus, she can talk back."

I stared at that, mouth working as I tried to come to terms with what she was saying. Finally, I managed in a weak, confused voice, "She... can?"

"Yes, Tether-Friend." Pandora announced from where she was standing. "Our biological material is mated to the device in such a way that if you initiate contact, our response will be carried through in a way that approximates speech. Dinah and Riley-Friends believed that our previous method of assuring your continued contact was flawed. Not only may you speak to us without arousing suspicion or confusion by conversing with a severed body part, but we may speak back to you appropriately."

On my wrist, the little robot thing went from silver to red, while a tiny, robotic voice said, "Like this."

Grinning proudly, Riley poked the thing. "I made it turn red when she's using it, so you always know."

I, quite honestly, had no idea what to say. I was a little bit afraid of the thing, yet also awed by it. I thought it was cool, but I was terrified of accepting a gift from _**Bonesaw**_. On the other hand, the idea of **not** accepting it seemed even more frightening. "I... ummm... thanks... I wasn't expecting a present."

"Friends give each other presents, silly." Riley shook her head and patted my arm. "It's okay though, this was my turn to give _you _a present, since you gave me your autograph before." Digging through her apron, the girl finally pulled out a small, dirty notebook and held it up to me. "Here, the instructions. He's got a lot of basic commands, and you can teach him more stuff. If you've got any questions, you can ask. But mostly, it's a trial and error thing. You'll figure it out. You're smart."

Slowly, I took the offered notebook. "Thanks again, uhh, Riley."

She giggled and then started back to the door. "You came to talk to Pandora, not me. Besides, I've got stuff to do. Super-special-secret stuff."

As Riley reached the door, she stopped and looked back at me. Her head tilted, and the immature lilt left her voice. She sounded solemn. "I'm not stupid. I know you're scared of me. And I don't blame you. I'd be scared of me too. But I wouldn't hurt you. You're my friend, and I don't hurt friends."

Before I could even think of trying to find a response to that, she went through the door and into the other room.

I stared after the door for a moment, then down at the transformed spider-bot clinging to my wrist. "Umm, Jalopy, exit camouflage?" The thing unfolded itself back up into its cell phone-sized spider-form and tilted its head toward me, waiting for commands. I just stared at the thing. "Uhh, hi there."

In response, the thing came skittering up my arm, making me jump and yelp. But it wasn't attacking. It just reached my shoulder and extended a pair of some sort of miniature grappler arms from its back, which reached over and adjusted my mask slightly, like a fussy mother checking her children's clothes. While it was doing so, the "Whistle While You Work" song from _Snow White_ emerged from it.

"Err, thanks..." I shrugged, remembering to do so only with the shoulder the thing wasn't perched on. "I guess you're pretty cool."

In response, the little robot started to play Queen's "We Are The Champions", while _dancing_ back and forth, waving those two grappler arms.

Okay, I know Bonesaw was completely pants-wettingly terrifying and all, but _**that **_was pretty god damn adorable.

Dinah cleared her throat from nearby, smiling faintly. "You wanted to talk to Pandora?"

"Right, right." I shook my head to clear it and looked at the clone. "Ummm, look, you know how I said I knew something important, but didn't want to talk about it last night?"

"Yes." She gave that short, jerky nod. "You assured us that you would share this information now."

"Yeah..." I let out a breath. "Okay, so you know how Marquis and Lung escaped from the Birdcage, with some other guys?"

"They will be fun to hunt." She announced with what sounded like glee. "Much more of a challenge than what few Merchants remain."

"Errr, yeah, see..." I hesitated, looking toward Dinah. She wasn't any help, giving me nothing more than a blank look. I shook my head and turned back to the clone, deciding to get it over with. "Marquis is Panacea's father. Her real, biological father."

For a moment, there was no reaction. Pandora simply sat there silently, face blank. As best as I could tell, she was considering the words. Finally, as I was about to say something else, she spoke up. "If he is the father of our sister, then he is our father as well."

Biting my lip, I nodded. "I guess he kinda is? I mean, I'm not _**entirely**_ sure he'll see it that way or whatever, but I thought you deserved to know about it. You know, before it came up some other way."

"We are glad that you told us this, Tether-Friend. If he is our father, it is even more our responsibility to stop him."

I blinked at that. "Your... responsibility?"

"Yes. He is a family member who is doing immoral things. And if he is attempting to see our sister against her will, he must be stopped. We will stop him. We will not allow him to upset our sister, or do anything to her that she does not wish."

"You... don't really want to get to know him?" I asked, weakly, while inwardly ranting at myself about what an idiot I was being.

"He is immoral. He is a criminal." She said flatly. "The criminals within the Birdcage are very bad, are they not?"

"The worst." I confirmed. "Usually. I mean, not Ruin, and obviously not Trevor. He's not really a criminal. But... yeah, Marquis was pretty bad. You should have Dinah get on the computer and show you some of the stuff he went to prison for. Or..." I cleared my throat. "Or Emma."

"We will do so." She confirmed. "We wish to know more of our father. But be assured, Tether-Friend, our alliance does not bend simply because our father happens to have chosen a different path. We will not become your enemy, or resume our... previous activities because of this information. We choose to be different. We choose Dinah-Friend's path. That is not dependent upon the actions or choices of our father."

I opened my mouth and then shut it. Jeeze, shut down twice in the same ten minute time span. First Riley knows exactly what I'm feeling about her and tells me she's not going to do what I'm afraid she'll do, and then Pandora basically does the same thing.

I looked toward the miniature spider-bot on my shoulder. "I guess I need to give people more credit, Jalopy."

As if in agreement, the chorus of Aretha Franklin's "Respect" filled the room.

**15.04**

As I was leaving the motel a little bit later, I paused in the empty alley. Straight ahead and slightly up, I could barely make out the edge of the roof of a building across the next street. All I had to do was attach a tether-line to it and haul myself out of there. I could be six blocks away within thirty seconds, the way I traveled. All I had to do was go.

Instead, I slowly turned around and looked up toward the roof of the building I had just left. Taking in a slow breath, then letting it out again, I warred with myself internally.

Part of me wanted to ignore Emma entirely, the way she had ignored Taylor's death. We had both been equally responsible, in that we hadn't meant for it to go that far, but we hadn't done anything to stop it, either. But she had seemed utterly unaffected by anything that had happened, to the point of using the apparent 'death' of Sophia to gain sympathy and even more popularity.

And yet, another part of me wondered if my resistance might be the fact that if Emma _**had**_ seen the error of her ways meant that I had given up on her when there was still a chance that she could get better.

Mostly, I had to wonder if my resistance to the idea that she had changed was because her actions had hurt me specifically. And more to the point, if I couldn't _even try_ to forgive her for what she had done _**if**_ her change was genuine, how could I possibly expect anybody to believe that mine was?

Yes, asking me to give Emma a break after everything that had gone on between us was asking a lot. So was asking people to forgive _**me**_ for the things I had done. I didn't get to pick and choose things that way. Either both of us deserved some small measure of forgiveness if we worked for it hard enough, or neither of us did.

"I hate arguing with myself," I finally muttered while extending a line that way. "I always lose."

Letting the line haul me up to the motel roof, I climbed up and over the edge, straightening before glancing around. It wasn't hard to spot my former friend. Emma was sitting in an ugly orange lawn chair, eyes closed as she was clearly focused elsewhere. One of the nearby televisions, no doubt.

First I looked around, but this was the tallest building in the immediate area, and I was fairly sure we weren't being watched. I tugged my mask off, letting it hang from a hand while I spoke. "Emma."

She jumped in her chair, almost collapsing it over before she managed to open her eyes and focus. She made a soft noise of surprise at the sight of me. "M-madison?" Hesitantly, she picked herself out of the chair, moving awkwardly and self-consciously, a far cry from the amateur model/professional head bitch in charge of the high school that I had known her as.

"What... I mean..." She met my gaze for just a second, before flinching away. I saw something pass over her expression, a sort of fear that confused me. Was Emma afraid of me? When she spoke again, it was in a soft, barely audible mumble, directly mainly toward the roof rather than at me. "Pa-Pandora and Dinah are waiting for you in the ro-room."

"I already talked to them." I was still trying to get a read on the other girl. God, I couldn't decide if I wanted this to be a trick, another game, or not. If it was one of Emma's ploys for attention and sympathy, I could deal with that. I knew how to handle it, and it would mean nothing had changed.

But if all of this was genuine, wasn't that a good thing? And did I dare let myself even begin to hope that it was, against the chance that she was fucking with everyone? After all, even a powerful precog wasn't omniscient. Was it _possible_ that Emma was faking this whole repentant thing?

Yet, if she was, why? She had the power now to leave if she really wanted to. Pandora was powerful, but could she have forced Emma to stay with them when the other heroes were there yesterday, right outside of the PRT building?

Okay, yes. She definitely could have forced it if she brought in the bodies and fought to do so. But she hadn't needed to. Emma had gone willingly, as far as I could tell. If anyone could escape Pandora, it was probably the girl who could direct every machine within a couple of blocks to fight the clone while Emma ran away.

Not to mention the fact that Pandora had called her friend. I wasn't sure exactly what that meant, considering she also called Riley her friend. Yet it had to mean that she was at least trusted enough by the clone-girl to consider her a friend, and not guard her when she was up here on the roof.

Actually, come to think of it, the selfish Emma I knew would have used every single phone within her control radius to call the Protectorate and let them know exactly where she was, where _Pandora_ was. Or, failing that, she would have called the news, or the army, or even some of the local gangs. Anything that could cause a distraction so she could escape. It would likely have ended in a protracted, bloody battle, but the Emma that _**I**_ knew wouldn't have cared, as long as she had a chance to get away.

Okay, that wasn't completely fair. She probably would have _cared_ about people dying so that she could get away, but she'd still find some way of justifying it to herself, like the fact that fighting things like Pandora was their job. Either way, she wouldn't stick around as easily as this.

Emma was frowning at the roof below her feet, brow furrowed in confusion. "Umm... you... alr-ready... talked to them?" She echoed, looking up again. Her eyes found the metal wristband on my arm, and then widened slightly. "O-oh... you got Riley's..." She gulped. "... gift..."

I remained silent at first, just staring at her until she looked away once more. It didn't take long. Finally, I spoke, unable to help myself. "Why are you doing this, Emma? Why are you still here? What are you trying to do?" My voice was a little more blunt than I'd meant it to be, but I couldn't help it. Or maybe I didn't try hard enough.

Emma's mouth opened and shut a couple times while she continued to stare at her feet. Her shoulders hunched a little, and I saw an obvious shiver run through her. Her eyes closed, and I saw a couple of tears form as she finally whispered, "I don't know."

She wasn't crying openly, not yet. But she did blink away several more tears to clear her eyes before focusing on me. Her voice was hoarse, and it was clearly a concerted effort for her to keep talking as clearly as she was, without breaking down. "I... don't know. I w-want..." Her shoulders rose and then fell in a defeated shrug. "I just... want to go back. I w-want... I want to b-be... someone who di-didn't... who didn't... I..." She lost the struggle then, eyes closing as she dissolved into a fit of tears that shook her shoulders. It looked ugly and brutal. Even someone as pretty as Emma Barnes couldn't make those kind of wracking sobs look good. This wasn't a dainty, 'oh I'm such a delicate flower, feel sorry for me' sort of crying. I had seen Emma do that enough to recognize it. This was real. This was... guilt. This was even more guilt than I had felt, maybe because of her closer relation to Taylor, or because she had let it fester for so much longer before accepting it. Probably both.

She... really... truly felt guilty about what she had done. What _**we**_ had done. It had taken her longer, had probably taken some intervention of some kind on Dinah's part, but Emma _**felt**_ what I had felt. She had triggered from the same thing, delayed as it was.

_She wasn't lying. _

Though I initially stood frozen from indecision, staring at Emma as she fought to find words for what she felt, I finally forced myself to move. One step, then another, I slowly, gradually made my way across that roof.

Eventually, I stood directly in front of Emma, staring at her. She was so lost in her tears by that point that she hardly noticed. Her mouth continued to open and shut, while what sounded like some broken little attempts at words came out. I had confronted her, had demanded to know what she wanted out of all of this. This, this was the only answer she could give me. There was nothing eloquent like forgiveness or absolution. She couldn't even make herself give some speech about how she didn't deserve anything. Every attempt she made to even **say**anything just made her break down even more.

I knew, to an extent, what she was feeling. I knew because I had felt it, the realization of what my own actions had resulted in. The dawning recognition of just what I had forced another human being to experience. The soul-withering knowledge that my actions, my selfish, stupid_**torture**_ of another person had resulted in their death.

Now Emma had that same realization, that same understanding, _**and Taylor had been her best friend**_.

The betrayal was even worse, the guilt that much greater, to the point that the Emma standing in front of me could hardly breathe, let alone talk in either defense or false prosecution of herself.

Before I consciously realized what I was doing, my hand settled onto Emma's thin, frail shoulder. I gave the slightest of tugs, and she all-but collapsed forward against me. My other arm went around her lower back. She was taller than I was by almost half a foot, so it was a little awkward, but I supported her as well as I could for a moment before both of us began to sink to our knees there on the roof.

Once we were both kneeling, Emma's head leaned forward and down until it was resting against my shoulder. "We..." She tried to speak, the words clearly difficult to force out. "We..." Another shudder ran through her, alongside another aborted attempt to say what she needed to say. Yet I didn't interrupt. I didn't prompt her. I knelt there on the roof, arms around Emma while her forehead lay against my shoulder, and I let her get through it in her own time.

"We... k-killed... her..." She finally managed, through an effort as exhausting as any athletic endeavor. Her tears soaked through the shoulder of my costume, as she made a weak, mewling noise of failure and regret. "We killed T-t-taylor. She... she's... I... M-madison... Madison, I'm sorry. I'm s-sorry... please...I... I c-can't... I ca-" Her words finally aborted entirely, the sudden burst of fresh tears tearing away her fragile voice.

My own eyes closed, and I felt that by-now familiar guilt well up inside me. My own tears, of regret, of _**shame**_, mixed on the roof with hers. It was all I could do to whisper, "I know."

I couldn't tell her it was all right. I couldn't tell her that things would be better. I couldn't even say that she'd stop feeling the agony of this guilt. All I could say were those two words, which meant so much more.

_I know we were responsible for Taylor's death. _

_I know you were best friends, until you betrayed her, and you're just now realizing what that means._

_I know this is real, that you aren't playing games._

_I know you hate yourself, more than almost anyone could imagine. _

_I know. _

How long we knelt there on the roof that way, I couldn't guess. My knees hurt, and my throat was sore. Yet I didn't want to move.

"What..." Emma finally spoke, her voice pained and exhausted. "What... d-do we... do now? I... it hurts... it hu-hurts so much."

"Do you want it to stop?" I asked, as gently as I could manage.

Her head shook slightly against my shoulder, as she answered even more quietly than before. "No. I..." She trailed off, and I felt renewed tears trickle over my shoulder. "I... d-don't want it to stop. If it... if it... " She swallowed painfully. "If it stops, I... I m-might..."

"Forget." I finished for her. "You might forget what this feels like, and..."

"And be th-that per-" She gulped once more. "...person again. I d-don't want to, Maddy. I s-swear... I'm s-sorry. I'm sorry, I don't want to be her ag-again, b-but... but I... I'm... afraid..."

"Me too." I whispered back to her. "I'm afraid that if I let myself be too happy for too long, if I let myself... stop thinking about it too much... that I'll become the person I was before, that I'll... forget everything and be the kind of... monster... that does those things."

I felt her full-body shudder then. "I don't... I don't w-want to..." She repeated in that same hoarse whisper. "H-how do I... how do we... n-not..."

"We..." I leaned back a little, moving a hand to Emma's chin, tilting it up so that she had to look at me. Her eyes were bloodshot, and she flinched but didn't look away once I caught her gaze. "We remember that... it wasn't some supernatural thing that _made_ us act that way, Emma. We weren't taken over by some evil spirit or monster that forced us to do those things. They were our choices. Everything we did, we did it because we chose to." She flinched and tried to duck her gaze again, but I held her chin steady. "Everything that happened, all of it, was our choice. And everything that happens in the future is our choice too, Emma. If you don't want to be that person again, then don't be her. It's all up to you. If you don't want to forget, then don't. Choose to be the better person. It's was your choice to be the person who did those things, and it's your choice to be a better one. You have to accept that... responsibility. Not just now, but all the time. You've gotta make that choice every single day."

"Does it... d-does it ever get... any... e-easier...?"

"Some days it's easier, other days it's harder. Some nights I can't sleep at all. I just lay there and... think about Taylor. I think about what we did, what we could have done different, what she was thinking at any given time. What she dreamt about, what she wanted to be if she had grown up. I think about... what we helped take away. I think about what we ruined."

"How... h-how do you do it?" She asked quietly. "It hurts s-so much... how do you... k-keep... going?"

"I visit her grave a lot," I admitted. "I... I talk to her. Maybe it's dumb, but... I tell her... what I'm doing. I tell her what's going on. I didn't even know her, not really. But... I still talk to her."

"We... w-we did so many... bad... h-horrible things, Maddy. We... she's... oh god... she's dead because of us. How do we... how... th-the things you do... being... b-being a hero, d-does it help make up for it?"

I shook my head a little. "It's not about a one-for-one trade. It's not about being a hero to make up for what I did, as if anything could. Life doesn't work that way. There isn't some... some set number of heroic acts or whatever that'll erase the horrible ones. We were terrible, _evil_people, Emma. How do we make up for that? We be _**better**_ people, every single day. Not up to a certain point, not until some imaginary debt is filled, but **every day** **for the rest of our lives. **We choose every day to do the right thing, even when it's hard."

We were both quiet for a few minutes, until she finally spoke again. "I... I miss Taylor." Her head bowed again, and I let it rest against my shoulder, holding her there as she whispered, "I'm s-sorry. You tried... t-tried to tell me. I sho-should have... should've listened t-to you. I just... I... the things we did... if I... if I admitted... that I was wr-wrong... then I h-had to... admit that... that she's dead because of me." She gulped hard. "T-Taylor's dead because... b-because of me. I... I killed my best... my best friend." Her tears were falling freely again, her entire body slumped weakly and brokenly against me.

"I..." My voice failed me for a moment, and I closed my eyes. I put my arms around the other girl firmly. Whatever our pasts, however she had acted before, Emma was sorry now. She would be sorry for the rest of her life. "I'm here, Emma. For whatever it's worth, you're not alone. I... I forgive you for what happened before. I know it's not much, and... and it's nothing compared to Taylor, but... but I forgive you for ignoring me, for... for all of that."

Eventually, she sat back and looked at me. "We... choose every day?"

I nodded. "Every single day."

Taking in a long, shaky breath, then letting it out again, Emma was silent for a few long moments before speaking in a whisper. "Then I... I choose to st-stay. I choose to stay with Di... with Dinah. It's... I.. I don't know what she... what sh-she's doing, and it's... it's so... scary... and I miss my parents... and my sister... I miss my family. But after.. after what I did... I..." She looked straight at me, gulping. "This is my choice. I... I'm gonna... help Dinah, any... a-any way I can."

"Whatever she's planning, she needs Pandora and Riley to do it. And more than them." I pointed out quietly. "It's going to be hard, Emma. You might..."

"Die?" She finished for me, looking stricken for a moment before closing her eyes as she gave one firm nod, then met my gaze once more. "Maybe... m-maybe I deserve to. But... b-but it's my choice. Being here is my... my choice. I'm scared. I'm s-so scared. But... I'm not... leaving. For... for once in my... life, I'm going to do the right... thing. I'm staying."

"Be careful, Emma. Please. Just... be careful. I don't care what happened before, I don't want you to die."

We were quiet for a few more moments, staring at one another. Then Emma looked down again, a sheepish, embarrassed look crossing her pale face. "I guess... t-trying to be friends with... T-Tether must've seemed really... really st-stupid."

I shook my head. "Don't... don't worry about that."

"I... I re-really am sorry about your parents... M-mads. I'm sorry for everything."

I embraced her then. "I know." I did. I believed her. Maybe it was wrong, maybe I'd regret it. But in that moment, I chose to believe my former... my friend. I chose to believe my friend.

**15.05**

"Trust me, Hunter, you'll be fine." I assured the older girl while walking across the mall parking lot with her, about three hours after I had left Emma. "You're not gonna hurt anybody in here, because you're staying with me." I had already explained how my power worked, but I did so again just to make her feel better. "I get a warning whenever someone is in danger like that. It's precognative. So if I see a bunch of people suddenly in danger, I will attach a line to your shirt and slam you down onto your face before you accidentally speak. I hereby promise to abuse the hell out of you if I get the _slightest_ inkling that you might accidentally use your power."

She still looked nervous to be out and around people (not to mention the fact that her power had originally manifested in a mall), but I doubted that secluding herself in a room was going to do any more to help her control her ability than sitting in a prison cell for three years had.

"Besides," I gave her a gentle poke with two fingers. "You need new clothes. I know we're practically the same size and everything, but borrowing mine forever just isn't gonna work."

The other girl stopped walking at that. When I turned that way, she slowly, deliberately lowered her gaze to stare at the borrowed shirt she was wearing. It happened to be one of my favorites: a pale violet base, with an image of a bright sunrise and a rainbow framing a majestic white unicorn that was surrounded by sparkly faeries throwing brightly colored glitter everywhere.

Pulling that shirt out a little to stare down at it, Hunter looked up and purposefully met my gaze before nodding emphatically to my last words before making a face like she was gagging.

I stuck my tongue out at her for that. "Hey, that's an awesome shirt right there. Unicorns and faeries are badass. I know you've been out for awhile, but it's totally cool to be into those things now."

Ruin looked doubtful, even before another voice spoke up. "Don't listen to her. She just wants to make someone else into half the dork she is."

I spared Dennis a withering look over my shoulder as he approached. "I'm a dork? I'm sorry, which one of us just went on an hour long rant about who should play Casper in the Seventh Reach adaptation movies like, a week ago?"

"They only cast that girl because she's got giant bazungas!" He shot back. "Her hair's the wrong color, and she's too old. Casper's supposed to be like, twelve when the series starts, and seventeen when it ends. The actress is _**already**_ seventeen. By the time the last movie gets made, she'll be like twenty-five years old! Twelve, not seventeen! How the hell is Squint supposed to make any damn sense if she's already a teenager? The whole thing that starts the first book is them trying to separate Casper from Squint because she's not old enough to have an ALPS unit yet, which doesn't make any sense if she's-"

He stopped talking then, in mid-rant. "Wait a minute, you were complaining about that just as much as I was."

"Hell yeah, that casting choice is idiotic," I agreed with a wink. "But it still worked to prove my point. You're just as much of a dork as I am."

Rolling his eyes at that, he extended a hand toward Ruin. "Hey, I'm Dennis. You would be Hunter?"

Hunter, for her part, was writing in the notebook she'd taken from her pocket. She put it away to shake hands with him before holding the pad up for us both to see. The note read, '_As if the movie could make Overglenn look anywhere near as cool as it's supposed to anyway.'_

My eyes widened at that. "You know the series?" When the other girl nodded, I considered for a moment. "Right, I uhh, guess you had a lot of time to read in there."

Hunter nodded again, scrawling a quick note that read, '_Dragon took requests for books.' _

"Well now you can get whatever books you want," I informed her. "No intermediary."

Dennis chuckled. "I knew there was a reason I agreed to help out today."

I batted my eyelashes at him. "Because I'm cute, adorable, persuasive, and totally one of your best friends?"

"Eh, one out of four anyway." He shot back with a wink. Ignoring my indignant huff, Dennis looked toward Hunter again. "Anyway, Madison says you need to do some shopping. Why she thought _**I**_ could help with that is beyond me."

"Mostly you're here to carry stuff," I admitted. "Besides, Vicky's busy with Amy. I had to work with who was available. Speaking of which, have you seen Missy?"

He nodded over his shoulder. "Yeah, she's inside already. C'mon, we'll go find her. Then we'll find poor Hunter some clothes that won't make her choke on all the sugary sweetness."

We walked into the mall then, while I muttered, "Buncha Philistines. Unicorns are awesome."

"Okay, okay. Straight off the balcony, three full loops, back around the trash can, and into my hand."

It was an hour or so later as Dennis listed his instructions to Missy, who scoffed. "I thought you said you were gonna give me a hard one."

The four of us were taking a break from shopping to sit out on the exterior balcony area of the food court, eating ice cream and messing around. Missy had folded a piece of paper into a tight triangular shape what the kids at school called a football, and had it balanced on its end between her finger and the top of our table.

"All clear?" She asked after focusing for a few seconds.

We had the whole balcony to ourselves, so there was little chance of anyone noticing what we were doing, but we still looked around, just to be sure. Hunter shook her head, while Dennis gave a thumbs up. "We're good."  
>Exhaling, Missy expertly flicked the back of the paper football with her other index finger. It flipped through the air and off the balcony, before the space she had distorted made it do one, two, and then three loops before our eyes. The twisted space brought the paper down low around the nearby trashcan, then flipped it up higher into the air before it fell neatly into Dennis' outstretched palm.<p>

"Hah!" Missy pumped both arms into the air, then held her hand out expectantly. "Five bucks, dude."

"Swindler." Dennis complained good-naturedly as he dug into his pocket before placing the five dollar bill in her hand. "You have so done paper football before."

"I never said I didn't," the younger girl pointed out. "You're the one that was like, 'oooh, Missy, lemme show you this cool thing you can make with paper.'"

While they were talking, I glanced toward Hunter, smiling faintly at the sight of the other girl's expression as she sat with her eyes closed, savoring the double-chocolate fudge malt. Clearly the Birdcage hadn't been overflowing with stuff like that.

"Good stuff?" I asked while taking another spoonful of my own peppermint malt.

Realizing I was talking to her, Hunter opened her eyes and looked to me before nodding. Then she frowned a little, looking at the cup and then at the bag of clothes on the nearby chair.

I glanced that way as well. Apparently, the older girl's tastes in clothing ran along the formal vein. She seemed to prefer slacks with nice button-up shirts that were all simple, solid colors. I guess after years of nothing but prison sweats, she wanted to dress nice.

"Everything okay?" I asked, curiously. "We could take another pass through and see if there's another shirt you like or whatever."

Blanching at the suggestion, Hunter shook her head firmly. She hesitated then, looking uncertain before tugging her notebook back across the table. After scribbling something in it, she turned it around for me to see that she had written, '_Too much. No money, no job. Want to help, not sit around'_

"Oh hey, it's okay." I started to shrug it off, before frowning as I thought of how I'd feel in that situation. "You want to contribute, huh?"

Her head bobbed, and she used her pen to circle the '_not sit around'_ part.

"Yeah, I guess you got enough sitting around back in the Cage." I let out a breath, considering for a moment as I tried to think of what she could do.

It was Missy who spoke up, apparently having noticed what was going on. "Hey, Madison said she saw you fight up there and that you were really good. I mean, without any powers or anything."

A slight blush came to Hunter's face before she shrugged and made a so-so gesture with her hand.

"She's amazing." I insisted. "She was barely moving and she was still beating the crap out of those guys. Seriously, they couldn't even touch her." I used my pink spoon to point at the older girl. "How long have you known how to do that stuff? Did you learn in the prison or something?"

Her head shook and she wrote down, _'my mother taught me.'_

Dennis leaned over to read that. "Your mom, huh? Where's she from?"

Hunter scribbled the answer, _'Nice.' _

All three of us blinked blankly at that. "Nice what?" I asked, confused.

Her eyes rolled, and she added to the note so that it said, _'Nice, France.'_

"Wait," Dennis frowned. "Where's your dad from?" He waited until she had written the response, then read it aloud. "Hong Kong? Seriously? Your mom is from France and your dad is from Hong Kong, and your _**mom**_ is the one that taught you how to fight?" When she nodded, he threw his hands up dramatically. "Well, I give up. If you can't count on the 'Asian guy is the badass fighter' cliché, what **can** you count on?"

Missy replied dryly, "I think you're making pretty good inroads toward a 'red-headed boys are ignorant' cliché, if that helps at all."

Making a face at her, Dennis took up his own ice cream. "She knows what I mean." He nudged Ruin.

Hunter was smiling a little, still blushing from the unaccustomed attention as she shrugged once more.

"Anyway," Missy focused us once more. "My point was, if Hunter's such a good fighter, maybe she could help teach us. It's been awhile since we had a devoted hand-to-hand teacher. Ever since... ummm... Geomi graduated like, six months after I joined." Her voice went soft for a second, and I remembered that the Korean-born hero had gone back to visit his native home and never returned.

Ruin looked startled by the suggestion. Her mouth was open as she stared at Missy, before writing, _'Teach you?'_

"Sure." Missy nodded. "Teach all of us. I mean, we still get the basic self defense stuff from the PRT guys that helps a lot, but ever since Geomi left, it's been hard to find a full-time teacher that's not busy all the time. I bet they'd even pay you for it." When Hunter started to self-consciously shake her head, the other girl added, "Please? You'd be helping us a lot."

After another moment of hesitation, Hunter finally nodded and wrote, _'If the people in charge agree.'_

Smiling at that, I gave Vista a thumbs up for the help. She winked back at me and continued to eat her ice cream while remarking, "So what next?"

"Well, Hunter says she has enough clothes now. So I think we've done enough shopping."

Dennis practically wept in exaggerated relief. "Oh thank you, thank you. No more dressing rooms."

"Oh please, it wasn't that bad." I scoffed. "Besides, now we can have fun. That mini golf place across the street's still open." I nodded between the other three. "Me and Missy take you and Hunter, what do you say?"

The boy glanced toward Ruin, then back to me. "I say... bring it on, Captain Triple Bogey."

"Oh my god, he is so _**adorable.**_"

I grinned in spite of myself at Marissa's reaction to Jalopy as we stood in the kitchen of my parents' house the next afternoon. The little robot was unfolded into his spider-form on the kitchen table, peering up at her with what I swore was curiosity.

"Yeah, he's pretty cool." I agreed, winking at the robot. "I guess I'll keep him around."

As soon as I said that, Jalopy put his little grappler arms up in the air and started dancing right there on the table, perfectly in synch right with the song '_Stayin Alive_' by the Bee Gees.

A muffled squeal of delight escaped Mars as she covered her mouth with both hands, staring at that with wide eyes. "**Bonesaw** made this little guy? Are you sure?"

I shook my head. "Don't call her that. She's Riley. Hopefully we can just... stop her from being Bonesaw completely. Dinah's working on it, she just needs time."

Mars gave a little shudder. "I've seen some of the stories about the things she's done. She's... scary."

"Yet, she can make things like this." I pointed out mildly. "I don't know what happened to make her be the way she was, Mars. But... isn't it better if Dinah pulls this off and brings her back to where she can do some real good instead of evil? I know she did a lot of... really, really bad things, but Dinah's making progress already. I... I don't believe in writing people off when there's still a chance. Not after everything that's happened."

"You mean miracles like you making up with Emma?" She asked while putting an arm around me.

I blushed a little at that, leaning against her as I watched Jalopy investigate the open bag of bread at one end of the table. "Yeah, miracles like that." Tilting my head back and up, I smiled. "I like that you made your hair blonde again, by the way." Marissa had apparently decided that without Coil around, there was no more need for her to hide quite as much as she had been.

"Aww, you didn't like the brown?" She teased, squeezing her hand against my stomach.

"I just like the blonde better," I assured her. "Because that's how I met you. But I'd like you no matter what color your hair was."  
>"Even... orange and purple polka dots?"<p>

I made a show of shuddering. "Oooh, ummm... hmmm, maybe I should rethink that whole-" My teasing was interrupted when Mars kissed me, drawing out a weak little whimper as I leaned up into it before breathing out the words, "Yeah... any hair color."

After a moment of that, I glanced back toward the table and giggled at the sight. Jalopy had dragged two of the bread slices out of the bag, and had braced them up against one another in a tent shape. Now he was crouched inside it.

"Jalopy, did you build a fort?"

His response was to play a song I didn't recognize. It was some old country tune about the Alamo.

While we were laughing at that, Jess rolled into the kitchen. "Did you guys see the news? They—awww, who's your little friend?" Jalopy had ventured out of his bread fort and was staring at her.

"Oh, Jess, this is Jalopy. Jalopy, Jess." I waved a hand back and forth between them.

No sooner had I made the introductions, than the little robot hopped from the table to land on Jess's leg.

Once I was sure she was all right with Jalopy investigating her, I asked, "What news?"

Jess glanced up to me while holding her hand down for the robot to poke at curiously. "Apparently they're not putting in a new national PRT director."

I blinked at that, frowning. "They're not?"

Her head shook. "Nope. They announced it after Director Costa-Brown's funeral. They're folding the PRT into the Protectorate. There was some noise about how keeping them separate led to all these recent problems, and that capes and non-capes need to work together for a better future and all that stuff. Everyone's supposed to be one big happy family now."

I shook my head slowly. "Huh... I wonder whose idea that was. And how it's gonna work."

"You mean if it works." Marissa shrugged. "Lots of people are going to be upset about that. The whole 'PRT is run by non-capes' is kind of a big deal, isn't it?"

I nodded. "Yeah, but after what happened with Teacher, I guess they lost all their leverage. Most of the people that were against the PRT and the Protectorate that had any power were..." I swallowed. "They were in that building. Now the PRT has to rebuild, restructure, and it sounds like they're already using that and the lack of strong opposition to do some of the stuff they've been wanting to for awhile."

"Like combine the two organizations." Jess supplied.

I nodded. "Like combine the two organizations."

By that point, Jalopy had climbed up Jess's arm and was perched on the top of her head, fiddling with her hair. "Err," She lifted her eyes without moving her head. "What's he doing?"

Marissa leaned over that way and then snickered. "Aww, Jess, he's braiding your hair."

"Oooh, Jess." I grinned. "Looks like you've got an admirer."

On cue, the little robot made what sounded like a small purring noise, before Queen's _'Crazy Little Thing Called Love' _began to play.

Marissa's smile was just as bright as my own. "Yup, definitely likes you."

Blushing, Jess reached up to pet the robot's back with a finger. "Hey, little guy. I'm pretty sure any kind of relationship we had would be really tough to pull off."

Jalopy's response was to switch songs to Pat Benatar's _'Love Is A Battlefield.' _

**Interlude 15 – Pandora-Gamma**

One of the Pandoras sat in the far corner of a diner, her hair and face altered to avoid recognition. Or rather, mistaken recognition, since any who saw her would believe she was Panacea-Sister.

"We would like to eat more of the frenching fries, please." She said to the waitress who stood nearby.

The older woman chuckled and made a note on her pad. "Same as usual, huh, sweetie? You want a coke too?"

"Yes." The Pandora gave a short nod. "We would like the brown bubble liquid."

Shaking her head, the waitress started away. "Still not sure who this 'we' is, babe, but you keep tipping like you have been and I'll serve every imaginary friend you want."

The Pandora watched the waitress go and put the order in, listening as she spoke with the cook about how the 'cute, but disturbed little blonde girl' was back.

She thought of herself as Pandora-Gamma, mostly because she had been the third body created after their first-death, and the subsequent loss of Pandora-Prime due to the actions of Trickster-Enemy and Ballistic-Enemy. She, Pandora-Beta, and Pandora-Alpha had been left in the building after Tether-Friend interrupted Beta's attempt at securing revenge on Ballistic-Enemy for the death of Prime.

Once, the Pandora-Entity had been one true self, able to duplicate, yet remaining an individual in full control. The Prime had been the leader, whose urges and thoughts commanded her duplicates as though they were ants to her queen.

Not so any more. The Prime had been killed by Ballistic-Enemy and Trickster-Enemy, leaving only the three bodies that she had already formed: Alpha, Beta, and Gamma. Then... the body of Prime had gone missing, and the three who remained had been unable to renew any kind of connection with it.

Without the Prime, the concept of I became We, as the three Pandoras who remained were all equal, and all unable to understand which of them was the true Pandora.

In addition, none of the remaining three were as unlimited as the Prime had been. She had been capable of creating an effectively unlimited number of duplicates, provided she had the required body mass. The three duplicates that remained after her death, however, were each only capable of creating five duplicates themselves before their identity would spread too thin without the Prime, effectively limiting them to eighteen simultaneous bodies.

Nor was each of the Pandora-Selves entirely interchangeable. Once one of their selves had formed, that self would retain some semblance of individual thought and identity that would return even if that self broke apart and reformed later. Essentially, any experience or thoughts that the Pandora who thought of herself as Gamma had, remained a part of her core identity. If the body that the Gamma-identity was using was destroyed, the next body that any of her other selves formed would be Gamma again, with all the thoughts and experiences that every iteration of Gamma had.

All of which meant that Pandoras Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, all the way down to Sigma, were their own individual selves, while simultaneously being connected to one another via their hive-mind that allowed/forced them to constantly share thoughts with one another. And without the Prime to direct them, all were essentially equal, with no idea of how to proceed. Their Prime, their Queen, had disappeared, leaving them bereft of leadership.

It had been Dinah-Friend who helped them. She had introduced the Pandoras who remained to the concept of democratic decisions. Essentially, any argument or disagreement that came up was immediately solved by simply allowing each of the eighteen iterations (even those that had no current body remained a part of the hive mind so long as at least one Pandora body existed) to vote. Most disagreements were solved so quickly this way that to outsiders, it would appear as though none had existed. Each of the eighteen would always follow the result of the vote, no matter how against it they had been. It was just the way they worked.

As they had told Tether-Friend, each Pandora was also capable of manifesting with the powers of a parahuman they had absorbed, rather than their own abilities. However, not only would the death of that alternate-power Pandora destroy their ability to manifest with that power again, but it would also destroy one of their eighteen separate identities, permanently. If Pandora-Theta manifested with the powers of Mush from the Merchants, and subsequently died, the rest of the Pandoras would not be able to use Mush's powers again, and Theta would vanish from their collective, reducing them to seventeen simultaneous minds and bodies.

"Psst." The young man in the next booth over from where Gamma sat hissed to get her attention. When she looked up, he gave her a wave. "Sorry, I've just seen you in for the past three nights, so I thought I'd say hi." He turned a little in his seat and extended a hand. "My name's Tiberius. Yeah, I know. Parents were big Star Trek fans, and apparently James was too damn easy. Anyway, my friends call me T."

She sat there, silently staring at his outstretched hand while the discussion went on inside her connected hive mind.

_**GAMMA – The boy is not a threat, nor a valid target. **_

_**ZETA – What does he want?**_

_**OMICRON – We know of this. The handshake. It is a method of greeting originally meant to show that the participants were unarmed. **_

_**IOTA – We are armed. We are always armed. To shake hands would be a lie. Dinah-Friend says that lying is wrong. **_

"Uhhh," The boy called Tiberius raised an eyebrow. "It's just a hand, not a wedding invitation. You okay?"

"We are well." Gamma answered.

_**GAMMA – We will stand out if we refuse to shake his hand.**_

_**EPSILON – It is a custom that has grown beyond what it previously represented. There is no lie in accepting it. **_

_**ETA – Agreed, shaking the Tiberius-Undetermined's hand now is the safe and accepted course of action. **_

The voting took only a fraction of a second, before Gamma extended her hand and took the boy's in the way that Omicron had remembered.

Grinning at that, Tiberius gave her hand a firm shake. "So what do I call you?"

Gamma tilted her head. "We are unaware of what you call us, considering you do not know our name."

The boy blinked at that. "Err, it means, 'what's your name?' And what's all this 'we' stuff anyway? You hiding a mouse in your pocket?"

Instinctively, Gamma looked at what appeared to be pants she was wearing. "No, we have no mice. Is this another method of greeting, exchanging mice?"

Tiberius laughed. "Wow, uhhh, okay. You're one strange girl, ain't ya?"

"Others have said we are."

Letting out a breath, the boy considered her thoughtfully for a moment. "Okay, let's try this again. My name's Tiberius. What's your name?"

_**IOTA – The name of Pandora may be known, and will not be seen as conventional. **_

_**ETA – Another name is needed. We are also called Panda. **_

_**NU – Only by our friends. Tiberius-Undetermined is not yet a friend. **_

_**KAPPA – To use any other name would be a lie. It is not truly our name. **_

_**EPSILON – Our current self is known as Gamma to ourselves. That would be no lie. **_

"Gamma." She answered finally. "We are..." She paused then, because 'we' didn't apply. Only this single iteration went by that identification. "I am called Gamma."

The boy blinked at that. "Wait, did you say I that time?"

She gave a short nod. "We did."

His mouth opened, then shut before he shook that off and apparently decided to press on anyway. "Gamma, huh?" Tiberius shook his head. "Guess your parents were pretty weird too.

"Our father is a bad man. We do not know who our mother is."

"And now we're back to our and we." The boy chuckled once more. "See, when I was working up the nerve to introduce myself, I thought of all kinds of ways this could go. Have to say, this was not one of those ways. You're a really strange girl, Gamma. And I mean that in the... ahhh, most polite way I can."

Before Gamma could find the proper response to that, the waitress returned with a large basket full of french fries, and a glass of coke. "Here you go, sweetie. I hope T isn't bothering you too much." She made a mocking huff noise at the boy. "This boy just don't know how to mind his own business."

"Aww, you're just jealous cuz I'm talking to someone else tonight, Anna." Tiberius replied with a wink.

"Ha!" The waitress gave an exaggerated laugh. "On second thought, you keep him distracted long enough, and maybe I can actually get all my side work done early tonight." Sobering, she focused on Gamma once more. "You let me know if you need anything else with those fries, okay?"

"We will inform you if we require anything further." Gamma agreed before picking up one of the french fries. She ate it slowly, savoring the taste.

_**RHO – Why does our Gamma iteration enjoy the frenching fries so much? **_

_**ALPHA – It is the first food that our Gamma iteration partook of after the loss of Prime. Perhaps it is an emotional attachment. **_

_**GAMMA – It may be such. Gamma-Self enjoyed the taste when speaking with Dinah-Friend before our democratic structure was fully developed and understood. Gamma-Self enjoys them now as well.**_

_**XI – Xi-Self prefers the brown bubble liquid.**_

_**OMICRON – It is called coke. Omicron-Self must agree. The coke is very fun to drink. **_

Tiberius was watching Gamma eat. "You know, I don't think I've ever seen someone enjoy any food the way it looks like you enjoy those french fries. I've seen you eat them for the past three nights, and every single time you look like it's the most amazing thing you've ever eaten."

"I enjoy the frenching fries." Gamma agreed, while taking another one and savoring it.

"And now I again." Tiberius grinned. "I am never gonna figure you out. But look, it's just 'french fry', not 'frenching.' Frenching is—errr, never mind. Just french fry."

"French fry." Gamma repeated, considering the words. "We will remember."

"Thing is," the boy went on thoughtfully. "I've never seen you use ketchup with the fries. You just prefer them without it?"

Gamma ate another of the french fries and then looked to the boy curiously. "Ketchup?"

"Oh man." Tiberius shook his head. "Seriously, we have got to talk about what hole you crawled out from under. Yeah, ketchup. Look.." He stood from his booth, picking up his plate that still had half a sandwich on it. "You mind if I sit here?" He nodded toward the other side of the booth.

Gamma's head shook. "We do not mind. The seat is available and unused."

Still looking amused by that for some reason, the boy sat down, then reached out and picked up the ketchup bottle. He popped it open and turned it over, squeezing out a bit into an empty corner of the fry basket. "There, now try that." When Gamma reached out with a finger toward the ketchup, he laughed and caught her hand. "No, not like that."

_**NU – Tiberius-Undetermined is touching us. We did not give him permission to do so. **_

_**LAMBDA – Is it an attack? May we defend ourselves? **_

_**EPSILON – It is not an attack. It is a correction for our behavior. We may also correct his. **_

_**XI – Politely. Escalating conflict is not required. **_

"We did not give you permission to touch us." Gamma informed the boy. "Please cease doing so."

Blinking at that, the boy released her hand. "Oh jeeze, I'm sorry. I just... I guess that was pretty damn rude. I don't think things through. I was just... here, use it like this." He took one of her french fries, dipped it in the ketchup, and then offered it to her.

Curiously, Gamma took the offered fry and examined it. The ketchup covered about half of it, and she slowly put it in her mouth, considering for a moment before her eyes widened. "Better!" She enthused. "The frenching—the french fry is better with the ketchup."

Tiberius grinned at her reaction. "See? I knew you'd like it. But how do you not know what ketchup is? And why do you usually say we instead of I?"

"That is a secret that we may not share with you, Tiberius-Undetermined," she answered primly.

"Tiberius-Undetermined? Are you trying to find out my last name?"

"You are not a friend, but we do not know if you are an enemy or not. We have not decided what you are. Your status is undetermined. It is our way of designating individuals for ourselves."

He was giving her another strange look. "You don't know if I'm an enemy or not? I'm pretty sure I'd rather not be, since I'm guessing that... being an enemy would be a bad thing?"

She dipped another french fry and enjoyed it. "Perhaps not. We are accustomed to enemies."

"What about friends?" He asked, taking a bite of his own sandwich while he regarded her with obvious curiosity. "You have very many people that you designate friend?"

Gamma lifted her gaze from the french fry. "We designate four as friends."

"Four, huh?" Tiberius took another bite while he watched her, before pointing. "I've got it. I know why you act that way. The whole designate thing, and why you talk all... proper and whatever."

He had her full attention then. Gamma tensed slightly, frowning at him. "You do?"

"You're a robot, right? Yeah, that's it. Some super tinker out there made a... whatcha call it, a sentient—wait no, sapient. That's it. Sapient robot. Did I get it right?"

"We are not a robot, sapient or otherwise."

"Damn." He snapped his fingers. "Are you sure? Wait, if you were a robot, you'd probably say you weren't."

She frowned at that. "We do not lie." A moment later, she amended, "We try not to lie. Our friend says that lying is wrong, unless there is no other option."

"Okay, so not a robot." Tiberius considered her. "I'll figure it out, you know. I'll get it right sometime."

"That is very doubtful."

Raising an eyebrow, the boy smiled faintly. "You don't think I can figure out who you are, where you come from, and why you seem so strange?"

"We would be very surprised if you did." Gamma carefully picked up another french fry and savored it with the ketchup. "Thank you for the advice. This-" She indicated the sauce. "Is very good."

"Just not quite good enough to tell me anything about yourself, huh?" Tiberius asked with a smile.

Gamma considered that. Advice in exchange for information of her choosing. Perhaps there was something innocuous that would not be too much, but would adequately repay him. "We have a sister."

"A sister?" He blinked before nodding slowly. "Is she anything like you?"

"No." Gamma gave a quick jerk of her head. "She is identical to us, but we are nothing alike."

"Err, identical, but not alike?" Tiberius frowned for a moment before snapping his fingers. "Twins?"

_**BETA – We are not twins, exactly. Saying so would be a lie. **_

_**ETA – But it is the closest to the true explanation that we may give. **_

_**GAMMA – Gamma-Self agrees. It may not be the truth, but it is close enough. **_

Another internal vote took place, before Gamma nodded. "Yes, we are twins. But she is not like us."

"I've never seen you with her," Tiberius pointed out. "She doesn't like diner food?"

Gamma's head gave another quick jerk of denial "It is us she does not like. Our existence offends her."

"Offends her?" Tiberius winced. "See, I don't have any siblings, but that sounds fucking rough. Have you tried talking to her about it?"

"She will not speak with us." Gamma ate the last of her french fries. "She has forbidden us from approaching her."

"Damn." The boy shook his head slowly. "Sorry to hear that. You think she'll change her mind?"

"We do not know. But it does not seem likely. We are very different." After answering that, Gamma stood up. "We must leave now. There are other things we must be doing." She reached for the money that she had brought.

"Oh hey, don't worry about that." Tiberius stood, taking out his own wallet. "It's the least I can do for barging into your private time and talking your ear off."

Her head tilted slightly at that. "We... thank you, Tiberius-Person."

Laying down the money, Tiberius quirked an eyebrow. "Person? What happened to Undetermined?"

"We have determined that you are not yet an enemy." She informed him succinctly.

"But not a friend either?"

Gamma looked at him briefly, considering. "We do not know you well enough yet."

"Yet?" He grinned. "Is that an invitation to talk some more next time? Maybe work my way out of 'person'?

"Perhaps. We will return tomorrow night," Gamma answered before turning to walk out of the diner.

"I'll be here!" Tiberius called after her, even as she stepped out of the diner, leaving him behind.

By the time she had reached the alley behind the diner, Gamma had returned to her usual form, so similar to Panacea, save for the minor cosmetic changes the Pandora-Group as a whole had made.

_**GAMMA – Gamma-Self has completed her indulgence. The hunt may resume. **_

_**LAMBDA – Lambda and Pi-Selves have found nothing of note within the house previously owned by our father. It has been thoroughly searched and emptied by law enforcement long ago. **_

_**IOTA – Our father cannot hide from us forever. We will find and eliminate him. **_

_**GAMMA – Agreed. Perhaps if we eliminate the threat he presents to Panacea-Sister, she will accept our attempt to communicate. **_

_**NU – Unlikely. Panacea-Sister will always despise our existence. **_

_**GAMMA – Yet we will protect her. She is sister. **_

_**MU – Mu and Kappa-selves will not allow harm to come to Panacea-Sister. Even if she must remain unaware of our proximity.**_

_**GAMMA – Gamma-Self will search the neighborhood surrounding Panacea-Sister's home once more. Perhaps Marquis-Father will send one to watch for her arrival, so that we may intercept.**_

With that agreed upon, Gamma focused just enough to split her body into a swarm of bats, all of which screeched together before flying off into the night.

They would continue to hunt for Marquis-Father, to remove the threat he presented. Then, perhaps, Panacea-Sister would stop hating them so much. Most of her other seventeen selves believed that she would always hate them, but Gamma hoped otherwise.

It would be nice not to be hated.


	16. Arc 16: Struggle

_**Notes: **Animeflunky – Glad you like Jalopy. He seems to be pretty popular, which is good since it's so fun to write for him. :) _

_Hellking666 – Total accident if they do sound similar, since I've never seen A Certain Railgun. _

_Feathers – Hey, glad you're enjoying it. I am purposefully going for a (to an extent) slightly lighter feel than canon Worm, where things like optimism still exist. _

_Imageination – Yeah, I thought it was important to have a peaceful arc before the crap starts hitting the fan again in this one. _

_Starfox5 – If it was as simple as just removing her vocal chords, Ruin would sign up for that in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, it's been tried. Her vocal chords include a minor regeneration effect that keeps them from damaging her own throat with the release of her power (since it is supposed to target biological matter) that means they'll grow back shortly after being removed. As for gagging her, it works to a limited extent, lessening the distance her power travels somewhat, but doesn't prevent it entirely. You'll see her use tape and whatnot on her own mouth to lessen the potential damage she could do as time goes on. _

_Clefspear – Thanks! I've been waiting to expand on exactly how Panda's multiple selves works and what her/their weaknesses were, so that was nice to get out. _

**16.01**

The Wards headquarters was filled with the the familiar (and fairly obnoxious) sound of party favor horns. The end of one blowout noisemaker in particular brushed against Dennis's nose as I blew into it in front of him. He recoiled with a laugh from the blaring noise, before snatching the end of the party favor away from me. "Hey, what're you trying to do, deafen me?"

I pouted a little. "Depends, would being deaf mean you don't have to leave the team? If so..." I withdrew a spare noisemaker and blew into that, dancing back out of the way when he tried to grab that one. "Uh uh! Mine. Besides, it has my geeeeeerms all over it." I made a point of blowing the horn while turning away so that he could take it from me.

"I don't think being deaf is a valid reason to stay on the Wards team past the eighteenth birthday, sorry."

I sulked a little more, both playing it up and genuinely sad that Dennis was leaving the team. It sucked even more than when Carlos and Dean had left. Not that I didn't miss them. We were buddies. But Dennis had pretty much been my best friend almost since we had met, both on the team and off. Losing him now was... it sucked. Even though I wasn't _really _losing him. He was just moving up to the Protectorate team. We'd still hang out. But it was still different.

It was August third, a little over five weeks since the events with the Birdcage. True to their word, the Protectorate had been merged with the PRT (and their PCIPS offshoot), and the PRT portion of the combined organization organization was now being led at the national level by Alexandria. That bit almost amused me, in a depressing sort of way. Teacher had been so certain that Director Costa-Brown, the leader of the PRT, was Alexandria, and now Alexandria really _**was**_ the leader of the PRT. Self-fulfilling prophecy, or something, I guessed.

Clearly the merger had kept Lady Photon really busy, because she had given Laserdream the responsibility of making sure the Wards were taken care of in all but name. According to Crystal, her mother was constantly flying (or being teleported if one was available) out to DC, or spending the entire day in conference calls. Alexandria was treating her as much like an equal as possible, considering the fact that Sarah Pelham had been put in charge of PCIPS only a relatively short time before both they and the PRT they had sprung off from were folded into the Protectorate umbrella.

There were still a lot of details to work out, but I mostly left it alone and focused on my own patrols and training. The past few weeks had been fairly busy, with even more villains deciding to show up and take sides in what was gradually turning into a full scale gang war between Marquis and Lung.

Apparently escaping from the Birdcage had made both of them into criminal celebrities of sorts, because the local villainous underworld had more or less split into two camps, one of which followed Marquis while the other rallied behind Lung. Worse, villains from areas outside of Brockton Bay had begun to flock to the city even more than before, and now there were leaders to keep them organized so they weren't so easy to pick off two or three at a time for doing something stupid.

For the most part, the two sides seemed split not so much along racial lines as Lung's group had been before, but along the class of criminal. Marquis' group tended toward the types that saw themselves as more honorable or reasonable, who didn't target families or police if they could avoid it, and so on. Oh sure, a lot of them were still monsters, but they tried to pretend they were civilized about it. Some, I guessed, actually were, while others were simply beasts wearing nice clothes and playing dress-up.

Lung's group, on the other hand, mostly consisted of the worst of the worst, the thugs who needed a powerful leader to rally behind. His lieutenants included a known cannibal, which said a lot about his standards. He kept them in line, apparently through brute force and determination, but they were still a loose-knit pack of psychopathic monsters, and more of them showed up to put themselves under Lung's banner every week.

On the plus side, the next Endbringer attack was late by a couple of weeks. Not that they always operated on perfect schedules, but still. Some people saw it as a good thing, while others were convinced that the longer the wait, the more damage Behemoth (it was his turn, after all) was going to cause when he finally did surface. Tension was mounting among some of those that just wanted to get it over with.

Technically, Brockton Bay was pretty much the safest place in the world to be, since the Endbringers never attacked the same place twice in a row.

Dennis interrupted my thoughts by pulling me back by the arm to give me a brief hug, using the distraction to take the back-up noisemaker from me. "Hey, you know I'm not going anywhere. You need me, I'll be right there. That goes for hero stuff or otherwise. Don't forget, you and me, we're buds. Team doesn't change that. Got it?"

"Best buds." I agreed, poking him in the side. "You're the one that better not forget it."

While Vista took her chance for a hug, I stepped back and looked around the room. We'd decorated the place as well as we could. There were streamers all along the walls and ceiling, posters made of Clockblocker over the time that he'd been a Ward, and even a banner strung up in front of the entrance that read, 'Oh Crap, He Can Vote' along with a picture of his face, which had been signed by all the Wards here as well as the Protectorate members. Missy had even gotten Dean and Carlos to sign it, with a few of their teammates who knew Dennis from other events. One side of the room was filled with tables that were loaded down with food and cake.

"Remind me to be glad that no one made this big of a deal for my birthday." Cassie muttered from the corner of the room where she had secluded herself. "I might've had stab somebody."

I turned that way to smile broadly at her. "Oh that was just your fifteenth birthday, babe. Wait until you see what we do for your _**sixteenth**_ party. I have ideeeeeeeaaaas."

The other girl blanched and shot me a threatening look, but all I did was waggle my eyebrows meaningfully at her before looking toward the boy who stood next to her. "Theo, you and me, we're gonna spend the year planning the best sweet sixteen birthday bash ever."

Theo's response to that was to blush and look away from me while mumbling something about not knowing how to plan a birthday.

The once-pudgy boy had spent the past five weeks filling out somewhat. He was still a bit on the hefty side, but it wasn't really flab anymore. The regimen that both Crystal and her mother, as well as Ruin as our unarmed combat instructor, had him on was converting the fat to muscle at an almost astonishing rate. It helped that he seemed motivated. For all his inability to stand up for himself or really make his opinion known, Theo Anders really _**did**_ want to be able to help other people.

Plus, even though she couldn't talk, Hunter was a very good teacher.

Meanwhile, I still had no idea what Theo and Cassie considered themselves. As far as I knew, they weren't _technically_ dating or anything, though she seemed more comfortable with him than she did most people. She didn't tend to snarl when he got too close to her, anyway. And the only time Theo seemed to open up somewhat was when he was talking to or about Reach. Basically, the two of them danced around the subject of being involved without ever actually saying or doing anything that confirmed or even fully denied it.

It was completely and totally aggravating.

Someone grabbed me from behind, and Victoria let out a dramatic sigh while pulling me around to put me between her and the door. "You like saving people, right? Can you save _**me**_ from the stupid public relations people trying to get me on the local news? They think the fact that my identity is public is Christmas come early. All that 'protect the Ward's secret identity' crap doesn't exist with me, so they wanna shove microphones in my face all day long."

"You really think they'll come bother you at Dennis's farewell party?" I asked, while extricating myself from her hold to look back at her. There were faint circles under her eyes. I knew Victoria hadn't been sleeping very well since we'd found out who Panacea's father was.

The older blonde girl scowled at that. "I wouldn't put it past them. They're leeches."

Knowing what she was really upset about, I asked, "How's Amy doing with everything?"

Victoria's eyes rolled. "You mean with being under constant twenty-four seven protection, or finding out that her real dad is a notorious supervillain crime lord?"

"Both?" I offered with a shrug. "I take it things are still tense."

"Tense is probably an understatement." Victoria sighed, leaning back against the nearby wall. "She's... jumpy and snaps at people for looking at her. I wish I knew how to make her feel better. She's my sister, you know? I don't care who her parents are. She's Amy."

"Sorry," I said softly. "I wish I knew what to tell you. If we can get Marquis back where he belongs, maybe it'll get easier? I mean, it's one thing to know your father's a bad guy, but having him be out there, probably trying to abduct her the second someone lets their guard down? I'd be tense too."

Victoria nodded at that, admitting, "Oh I definitely don't blame her. I just wish I knew how to help. So far all I can think to do is tell people to leave her alone and give her a break when she snaps at them."

Hesitating, I looked at Victoria briefly, then asked, "Does she snap a lot?"

She whistled. "Hooboy, yeah. I mean, she's just under a lot of pressure, so everyone just tries to stay out of her way and not upset her too much."

I bit my lip, staring at the floor for a moment before letting out a breath. "Maybe that's the problem."

Blinking, the other girl frowned at me. "That's the problem? What's that supposed to mean?"

Meeting her gaze, I explained, "Maybe the real problem is that everyone's treating Amy like she's some fragile little glass figurine that'll shatter the second someone breathes on her the wrong way."

Her head shook at that. "Madison, she's in danger. Marquis wants to-"

"What?" I asked. "Talk to her? Look, I'm not saying protecting her is a bad thing, but think about it. You said that your mom never really seemed to treat her like much of a daughter, right?"

Victoria blanched. "That's not... really fair. Mom took care of her. She fed her and clothed her and kept her safe."

I nodded. "But that's not the same as loving her. Sorry, Vicky. I'm not bad mouthing your mom, I swear. She deserves better than that. But you have to admit that, where Amy is concerned, she could have done a little better, been more affectionate. You and Crystal both noticed."

The blonde girl hesitated, but finally gave a reluctant nod. "What's your point?"

"My point is that she has no consistency. I mean, she's got the woman who raised her and then... and then died... never treating her like a real daughter. Then she finds out her real father is a supervillain and _**he's **_apparently so obsessed with getting a face to face meeting with her that she has to be under constant surveillance to stop him. The woman that spent her life being a super_**hero**_ and doing the right thing didn't seem to want her, and the man who practically defines super_**villain**_ is moving heaven and earth to get close to her. Of course she's confused. And as if that wasn't enough, now no one's calling her out on anything she does."

Victoria was staring at me, but at least she was listening. "What... do you mean, calling her out?"

"I mean when she acts like a brat, tell her so. She's not made of glass, Vicky. Look, she's pretty much never just been Amy Dallon. I get it. Before you guys got your powers, she was 'Amy, adopted daughter of superheroes'. After that she was either 'Amy, sister of Glory Girl' or 'Panacea, super healer who can fix everything.' I totally get that she's got problems. I do. But ignoring when she does or says something bad isn't helping either. She needs direction, and all she's getting is people who treat her like some_**thing**_ they have to take care of, like an asset."

"Before, everyone acted like she was some untouchable, perfect girl just because of her power. And now? Now it's worse, because people knows who her father is, so _**nobody**_ is calling her out when she acts like a brat. She has no consistency, no... solid ground. She needs people to love her unconditionally, but also **tell her** when she needs to grow up. Snapping at people for risking their lives to protect her? That's wrong. You shouldn't make excuses for her, you should _talk_ to her. Not as Panacea, or as Marquis' daughter, or as some kind of asset, because I guarantee that's how most of the PRT people see her, but as your sister. Vicky, I'm pretty sure that through her whole life the only person she was ever just _**Amy**_ with was you, and now even you're avoiding actually telling her to behave."

I sighed a little. "Trust me, Victoria, I grew up as the girl that could do no wrong. I was a spoiled brat, and maybe if my... parents had realized that they could love me but still realize that I wasn't a perfect little angel, and discipline me when I needed it, things would have turned out different. I'm not blaming them. What I did was my fault. But you aren't doing Amy any favors by treating her like she's some perfect, fragile little thing. She needs a sister, and she needs someone to talk to her. Because I guarantee you that she's been worried that you think she's going to become a villain like her father, and_everyone going out of their way not to offend her is probably just making it worse." _

The other girl's eyes were wide. "It's Amy! She'd never even think of doing anything bad."

I gave her a look. "She's a human being. Of course she'd think of it. But the point is to make her understand that she can make mistakes, she can do little bad things like yell at someone who doesn't deserve it, and then be talked to about it and forced to apologize, **and the world will keep turning.** Life isn't that black and white, Victoria. People don't exist as only perfect, incorruptible angels who make no mistakes, or psychotically evil monsters that strip the skin off of babies. It's not one or the other. People make mistakes, they do bad things sometimes. That doesn't make them bad people, it makes them people. Amy needs to be treated like a _person._ If she does something bad, say so."

Victoria was shaking her head slowly. "So, you think we should be mean to her?"

I sighed a little at that. "No, I think you should be _consistent_ _and fair._ Protect her, and love her, but when she acts like a brat, tell her so. When she snaps at people who don't deserve it, people who are just doing their job, tell her that's not right. Be there with her because she's your sister and you like spending time with her, not because you're afraid Marquis will snatch her out of your hands. That's bound to make her feel more like a possession than a person."

"You're telling me to be rougher with her, but still love and adore her."

"Believe it or not, it is possible to do both," I pointed out lightly. "Just because you tell someone when they do something wrong doesn't mean you don't still love them. Like I said, consistency. Tell her when she does something bad, but either way, be there with her. Empathize. You don't have to have all the answers, Victoria. You don't have to **fix** her problems. Just sit there with her and listen. Let her vent. Let her talk to you as a sister, not Glory Girl."

Vicky was quiet for a long moment before letting out a breath. "I guess I need to think about that for a bit." She glanced at me and gave a very faint smile. "Thanks, I think. I didn't really think about how protecting Amy might hurt her in the long run."

"Protecting her isn't bad," I said softly. "But ignoring when she does something wrong is."

"And here I thought I was supposed to be the new leader."

"Oh you are," I assured her with a shudder at the very idea of me taking that job. "You are _**so**_ the leader, and I don't envy you. But even the leader needs advice sometimes."

She watched me briefly, smiling just a little. "In that case, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna need advice a lot."

"Any time," I winked. "Besides, everyone knows it's better to be the power _**behind**_ the throne."

"Explain to me again how that suit works?" I asked Theo, or rather, Aid, the next evening. The two of us were walking along an office building rooftop in costume, getting a better view of the streets below to help decide where to patrol next.

Theo looked down at his new uniform. Before now, he'd been using a costume provided by the Protectorate, along with a few odds and ends he'd cobbled together. Apparently he'd been busy building himself this over the past few weeks.

It looked like a sleek suit of silver metal armor, covered practically from top to bottom with octangular designs outlined in blue, each about as wide around as the bottom of a soda can. The chest was the only place the octagons weren't placed. There, a roughly V shaped outline of the same color stood out slightly from the surrounding material, taking up most of the space from the shoulders, down to where his navel would be. He also wore a full helmet that looked almost samurai in design, and carried a shield on his back and a mace at his hip.

"Umm... O-okay..." He hesitated before lifting a hand to poke against one of the hexagons on his opposite arm. The hexagon actually depressed slightly under his touch. He pushed it in a little and held it for two seconds, before the bit began to glow with an inner light, and a humming noise started up. When Theo took his hand back, the hexagon shape floated off his arm, leaving an indentation in the metal below that showed where it had been. It wasn't that large, only about a half inch thick. But as it turned over in the air to be horizontal, the thing was expanding slightly. The top opened up a bit, rising to lock into place in a dome shape, while three small tentacles made of what looked like solid energy that were about a foot long dropped from the bottom to hang under it.

"They're, umm... drones... basically," he offered with a weak shrug. "They're equipped and programmed to protect civilians that are in danger, put out fires, shield people that are being attacked, that sort of thing."

"It looks like a metal and laser jellyfish." I announced, poking the thing curiously. "You mean every octagon on your suit deploys into one of these things?" When he nodded, I whistled. "Damn, no wonder it took you awhile to get it ready."

Theo shook his head, flushing at the attention as he made the drone collapse and reattached it. "I just hope they work right."

I looked past him, frowning. "I think you're gonna get a chance to test them." When Theo turned to see, I pointed toward the hotel on the next street over, where people were streaming out of the doors in some kind of panic. "Ready to go see what's up?"

He gulped nervously. "Umm, I guess so... Do we have to use your way, or can we take the _**STAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIII!**_" In mid-sentence, I attached lines to both of of our suits and rocketed us across the street and down to the parking lot below.

After landing, I called in the situation to Missy, who was manning the console, and said we'd check it out. Then I looked at Theo. "It's okay, Aid. We've got this. You've been helping us deal with the bad guys for a month now, and now you've got your real equipment. We'll deal with this too, whatever it is."

He nodded, and the two of us moved inside the hotel doors, finding ourselves in the middle of the pretty impressive lobby. The place was one of those hundreds of dollars per night sort of hotels.

With the crowd of people gone, it was quiet.

"Be careful." I said softly, before starting to walk. "Vista, do you know whether Marquis' group or Lung's has claimed this area?" There was no answer. "Vista?"

A heavily accented voice from behind us, at the doors, spoke up. "She will not answer. But I will."

Turning quickly, I blanched at the sight of Lung, his chest bared to show off the intricate dragon tattoos that covered his skin. His metal mask hid his expression, but I had the feeling he was smiling.

"Some of my people, they think I am not so strong. Not so good for leader. They think so because I am beaten by a child."

He tilted his head to one side, then the other, cracking his neck. "But if child is dead, then they will complain no more."

**16.02**

"Aid..." I said slowly. "We need to get out of here, now."

I wasn't under any delusions about what had happened before. I'd managed to keep Lung's attention long enough for_**Gallant**_ to bring him down. Only now Gallant wasn't here, and I kind of doubted that he'd miraculously appear.

No, we needed to escape, because this was a fight we absolutely could not win. Lung was a guy who had fought the entire local Protectorate at the time to a stand-still. I may have learned a lot over the past few months, but there wasn't a chance in hell that I could take him on, even with Theo's help.

My companion swallowed next to me. "Err... why's... why's he just standing there?"

"Not sure," I admitted. "But I'm not waiting around to find out."

To that end, I attached a line between a nearby chair, and the window far to the left of where Lung still stood, flinging it that way. I'd smash the window, then take Theo and get the hell out of this hotel.

That particular plan was derailed as the chair shattered into kindling after hitting an invisible wall.

Wincing, I shook my head. "Okay, that? That's not generally a good sign."

Sure enough, from behind Lung, Impasse appeared. He had stretched his invincible field over the entire entrance. He said nothing, apparently preferring to just stand there and leer.

"No escaping," Lung announced. "No leaving. We will fight. I will win."

I took in a deep breath before letting it out. "You really wanna do this? You want to fight me that bad?" The man nodded, and I gave an exaggerated shrug. "Weeeeelll, you know what they say. Always leave 'em wanting more." With that, I turned to look over my shoulder, attaching lines between both Theo and me to yank us backwards, straight to the door that led to the stairs. The second we landed, I shoved the boy through and followed after, while Lung bellowed something about us being cowards.

"Go, go, go!" I encouraged Aid, giving him a push to get him started up the stairs. "If we get to the roof, we can get the hell off this building!"

We ran up a single flight, and then I caught Theo by the arm and pulled him with me through the doorway into the second floor before continuing to sprint through the hallway.

"You said-" Theo started before I shushed him.

"Yeah, I said. And hopefully, they heard me. Now run, all we need is a window." I pointed to the glass pane at the end of the long hall. "Specifically, that one." As we ran, I sent one of the metal balls from my shoulder flying toward the window. This time, it shattered, glass spraying outward just before Theo reached it, a step ahead of me.

Both his armor and mine cushioned our landing enough that jumping from the second story to land in the parking lot was no big deal. We were out of the hotel.

"Vista!" I tried again. "It's Lung. You need to-"

Something hit me hard in the back, sending me sprawling to the ground. A moment after I hit the pavement, I heard Aid cry out as well, and then I was kicked in the side to roll me over.

Lung was there, silvery scales already forming over his skin as he reached down to haul me up. I could see the contempt and triumph in his eyes through the mask. "You think I am stupid, that I will chase the child, when the child must come here to escape?"

Great, he'd been smart enough to just wait in the parking lot for us. "Huh." I managed, even while my heart thudded in terror as I was held off the ground. "I guess those 'Dumb Thug to Criminal Mastermind' training videos really are paying off. Congratulations?"

He gave a bellow of anger, and everything started to get hot. My eyes widened, and I pointed both arms down. Attaching a pair of lines down to the pavement, I used them to shove myself up and back as hard as I could. The force tore me out of Lung's grip, just as the space I had been in erupted in flames.

A ball of fire appeared in the man's hand even as I landed, and then it was flying toward me. Grimacing, I used a line on my boots to spring sideways, looking toward my companion so that we could get the hell out of there.

It wasn't going to happen. Theo was down, and Impasse was practically perched on top of him. I couldn't get the new Ward out past that forcefield. And now I couldn't even lead Lung away. Leaving a vicious psychopath like Impasse alone with Theo was a very bad idea.

Lung was getting bigger every moment. As he took a step toward me, I pointed both gauntlets at him and sent all four knockout darts his way. His response was a contemptuous wave of his hand that sent fire rolling outward, destroying all but one of the darts. That one hit him, and the man slowed slightly. I had a flutter of hope as Lung lowered his head to take several deep breaths. The hope shattered a second later, when the man let out a bellow of frustration before straightening with a grunt of effort. His power had gone far enough that he was able to pull himself together, and now he was running straight at me, growing with every step. "You will fight!" He bellowed.

"Yeah, you know... I was going to, but my manager says you never agree to the exhibition match." I lamented while launching myself straight up. "You line up a good pay-per-view title match, maybe we can talk about the whole fight thing."

Lung leapt up after me, nearly snagging my foot before I used a line to a lamp post to yank me out of his reach. My focus wasn't on him, but on Impasse. If I could get Aid out from under him, we could get the hell away from both of these monsters. Honestly, I didn't particularly care if they thought I was a coward. On the list of things I gave a crap about, Lung's opinion of me was somewhere below the difference between real mayonnaise and miracle whip.

The problem was, the man wasn't just getting bigger and stronger, he was getting faster. I evaded his next attempt to grab me, but it was a near thing. Twisting around as I launched myself off of the lamp post, I called out toward Impasse. "You know what I just realized?"

Landing on my feet, I caught hold of a nearby parked car with a line and sent it flying at Lung, just to buy a second while continuing to address Impasse. "When we first met, I nearly gave myself a concussion by flying straight into your wall!"

The car was flung out of the way, and a ball of flame shot toward me as Lung shouted for me to stand and fight him. Instead, I flung myself forward and up, using the flung car to gain momentum.

Impasse was glaring at me, probably offended that I wouldn't stand still and let Lung tear me apart so he could enjoy the show. Poor baby.

"So it occurs to me that the only way that could have happened the way it did, was if my power goes through your field, and it's just the objects they're carrying that don't." Landing on top of the tipped over car, I smiled toward Impasse, not that he'd see it.

While he was still processing what I'd said, I attached a line between his shoulders and my extended gauntlet. Then I gave a hard **yank.** The line actually hauled the skinny little man off the ground, sending flying toward me with a shout. I dropped and rolled just in time, letting him fly over my head, his invisible field colliding with Lung.

I reached Theo a second later, just as he was sitting up. Taking his arm, I helped him rise, sparing a second to steady him. "You okay?" After he nodded, I looked away, focusing on an escape route.

Before I could move, I heard Lung bellow, "If the girl leaves, they will die!"

That got my attention. I turned slowly, facing the furious man. I could sense the intensity of his glare through the metal mask. His hand lifted to point toward the other side of the parking lot, where I could see the albino villain, Feast, standing over what looked like a family of five, all of them bound and gagged on the ground. They were civilians, innocents who just happened to be there. And Lung was using them as pawns, to stop me from leaving.

The bastard nodded confidently at that. "Yes. You are a hero. You will not let them die. You will stay. Or they will die. You will fight me."

"Aid," I said under my breath. "Help those people." When he started to protest that he couldn't do it, I cut him off. "Yes, you can. Stop Feast from hurting them. I'll keep Lung busy. You can do it, because that's our job. You're scared? Look at those people. Think of how scared they are. They don't have powers. They don't have training. You do. Now go save them."

I left him to it, moving to meet Lung, who was already walking my way. After two steps, the Asian man suddenly leapt forward, crossing the twenty feet that still separated us with a single bound. The fire rolled off of him in scalding waves that made me cry out, and then I was flung around, my back hitting a nearby parked car with enough force to set off the alarm even as a sharp, almost blinding spike of pain shot through me. Then I hit the ground, and hurt too much to move.

I felt something move on my wrist while I was still dazed, belatedly realizing that it was Jalopy, transforming himself back to his spider-form. Even as Lung reached down for me once more, the little robot unleashed a cloud of dark green gas that flew up into the man's face, making him jerk backwards with a cry as the gas began to melt through the metal of his mask. Acid. It was a cloud of acidic gas.

Lung had transformed too much by that point to say much. He bellowed again in fury, ripping the melting mask from his face before lunging forward once again.

Jalopy met him partway, leaping from my arm to land on the man's outstretched hand. The sound of Pat Benatar's "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" filled the air as the little robot scrambled up the man's arm, expertly evading his grasping hand by jumping over to the opposite arm, then leaping straight to Lung's forehead. The second that he landed there, Jalopy extended both of his grappler arms. A pair of tiny buzz saws emerged from each, before they were shoved _into Lung's eyes, _sending blood and, well, eyeball matter flying while the man let out a scream and stumbled backwards.

A wave of intense, blinding heat made me recoil, as Lung covered himself in flames. But the song kept playing. As I stared once the fire had died down slightly, Jalopy leapt off of his face to avoid Lung's grasping, desperate hand, landing on his shoulder before stabbing into the man's ear. The second he did so, Jalopy extended what looked like a glass tube of some kind, shoving it into the hole he'd made. Then I saw dark green liquid shoot up through the tube. Acid, like the gas. He was pumping acid _**inside **_of Lung's head, clearly aiming for his brain.

The Asian man fell to his knees, his eyes nothing more than bloody ruins. Still, he didn't fall entirely. Pressing his fists against the ground, he growled low, his scale armor expanding even as the air grew hotter by the second. He was summoning more fire.

I rolled out of the way just as two more scalding explosions of heat erupted off of Lung. Still, the little robot clung to the man, evading every increasingly desperate attempt to grab onto him. Unfortunately, the metal scales had grown enough to cover Lung's entire body, leaving Jalopy no chance to penetrate.

Finally, the little spider-bot jumped off of his enemy, landing on the broken pavement before starting to skitter around in a wide circle, looking for an opening.

Lung was enormous by then, fully twice the size he had started at. Silvery wings extended from his back and flapped down hard, sending a rush of heat in every direction. Still blinded, he spun to throw a wall of fire at the area where I had been before I'd rolled away. I was positive by that point that he was moving slower than before. The acid was doing its job to an extent, slowing his reactions and making him stumble at times.

I grimaced and started to straighten. Unfortunately, apparently lacking his sight wasn't enough, because Lung turned toward me at the tiny hint of a sound, somehow hearing it even over the loud music that Jalopy was playing. A new ball of fire formed in his hand, launching my way. Only his slowed reactions gave me the time to barely managed to throw myself out of the way before the flames tore into the pavement where I had been.

Falling unceremoniously onto my back after flinging my body almost frantically out of the way of the flames, I saw Lung forming another fireball. But I also saw something else, high above me. Smiling a little, I extended a hand outward and attached a line to yank Jalopy back to me.

"Sorry, buddy." I said while catching him with one hand. "Our ride's here." I rolled to my feet, facing Lung while cradling the spider-bot against my chest. The sound drew the man's attention and he sent that fireball at me. But I used lines on my feet to launch myself upward, as high as I could. Below, the fire blew apart the chunk of pavement where I had been.

As I flew threw the air, I put a hand up, and was caught by a blue skinned arm that held me aloft easily.

"How'd you know it was me?" Genesis asked, curiously. She lifted me up further and wrapped her other arm around me to brace me a bit more comfortably.

I regarded her form briefly. It looked like an angel with azure skin and golden glowing eyes, massive wings, and a flowing white hair that looked like it was made of energy. "Lucky guess."

From down below, Lung let out a roar and gathered yet another ball of fire in his hands. Apparently he was able to track our position just by the sound of our voices.

Before he could throw it, however, another voice called out, "Hey, Lung!"

Both Lung and I turned our attention toward the sound of the voice. Sundancer stood twenty feet away from the man. She wore her new costume. It was still skintight (and thus still _**very**_ distracting), but now the colors were reversed. Where she had worn black with red suns, now the main part of the costume was a deep red color, with black suns that stretched out over it.

When she had Lung's attention, Marissa asked, "You like throwing fire around?" Bringing her hands forward, she summoned the truck-sized miniature sun that was floating over her head, sending it flying at him while informing him, "Mine's bigger."

Sensing the _**unbelievable**_ heat streaking toward him, Lung gathered his wings and launched himself skyward. He was aiming for where Genesis was gliding with me, but she dropped back toward the ground, narrowly missing the edge of the heat zone that Marissa's sun was giving off in a maneuver so close that they had to have practiced it.

Cut off from us, Lung spun around in the air to bellow furiously. But the ball of sunlight had nearly reached him by then. He grimaced, groaning in actual pain as it got near enough to him, before letting his wings flap down hard, carrying himself out of its reach once more.

He flew straight into the side of a building that way, crashing through the glass before he kept going. Marissa stopped the sun, unwilling to risk sending it into the building after him.

Lung was gone.

Genesis landed next to Sundancer, letting me go before straightening. As soon as we were down, I turned first to where the civilians had been, finding them untied and hugging each other.

"I saved them." Aid, stepping up to where we were, sounded surprised. "I... I didn't... catch Feast, but I... I stopped him from hurting them. I... I actually... made him run away. He... ran away... from me." Poor Theo sounded rather dazed.

I smiled behind my mask, in spite of the pain throughout my body from when Lung had thrown me around. "Good job. See, I knew you could do it."

"Lung's gone too," Marissa announced with a sigh. "Sorry, couldn't follow him into the building."

"Hey, he retreated." I pointed out. "I think that means we won."

That fact was punctuated by Jalopy, who had abandoned my arms to sit on Genesis's angel's shoulder, as he played some kind of victory fanfare music from an old Earth Aleph video game that Jess had taught him.

"Damn straight, little guy." Genesis made the angel's head nod. "You were kicking his ass."

I could have sworn that the little spider-bot preened proudly at her words.

Shaking my head, I looked toward Marissa. "Thanks for the save."

"Hey," she shrugged, but couldn't keep all of the relief out of her voice. "Isn't that what we do?"

Smiling at that, I raised a hand to touch the only emblem on her new costume that wasn't a sun. My fingers brushed over the symbol of the Protectorate prominently displayed on her shoulder. "Yeah," I said with quiet pride. "That's what we do."

**16.03**

I was leaving the PRT psychologist's office the next morning after my regular bi-monthly interview. It was another of the sessions that were supposed to tell them whether I was stable enough to keep working with the Wards considering the type of person I had been before everything that had happened. As I walked out, I found someone waiting for me. "Err, hey Jess. What's up?"  
>Dropping the magazine she had been looking at, Jess rolled her chair backwards before replying. "Just finished my own checkup so they can make sure the Smurf's influence isn't about to turn me into a mass murderer or whatever."<p>

Jess and Mars had told the Protectorate the truth. They explained where they had come from and what had happened to them, though the bit about gaining powers from vials had, again, been left out. As far as the officials were concerned, the group had triggered as a result of their traumatic experiences.

It used to be that people who had been affected by the Simurgh were forced to wait almost a year to be processed back into the rest of the world, during which they were interviewed and evaluated twice a week to check their psychological stability. They had to accept the tattoos that let everyone know that they were a potential danger, and were also legally required to inform potential employers, landlords, and even the owner or manager of any large scale gathering of people that they attended like a sporting event.

Lately, however, that had been changed. Now people who were affected by the Simurgh weren't allowed to go anywhere at all. They were kept in quarantine, never able to integrate with the rest of society, just because of how paranoid people had become.

There was a reason that the Simurgh was, in many ways, the most feared of the Endbringers, in spite of doing less direct and immediate damage.

The difference with Mars and Jess was that the two of them had already been out and free in the world for over two years, and they were becoming _more_ stable now, not less. And the fact was, the Simurgh's longterm goals were fairly obvious by this point. She'd probably wanted to create Noelle, as well as the events that had led to the recent problems with the Birdcage. Jess and Mars seemed like small fish compared to those two things.

Not that they were given a free pass. Both of them still had to follow intense processing. They were being given the normal twice-weekly evaluations, and they were also giving the Protectorate all of the information they had about Noelle so that some attempt to find and hopefully contain her could be made.

Unfortunately for that effort, Trickster and the others had disappeared from the church and the girls hadn't heard anything from Ballistic for weeks. They had both practically worried themselves sick, considering the fact that Ballistic, or Luke, had been just as ready to turn on Krouse as they were. But there was nothing else they could do about it. As the weeks went on with neither sign nor word from any of the remaining Travelers, Jess and Marissa had gradually tried to move on a little, partly by throwing themselves into their new jobs as Protectorate members.

Honestly, I wasn't sure the Protectorate would have accepted them if they weren't pretty much desperate by that point. But the fact was, with the escape of Lung, Marquis, and their people, not to mention the sudden influx of villains trying to throw themselves under one of their banners, the local Protectorate was _horribly_ outgunned and outnumbered. They needed everyone they could get, even alien former villains who had been at ground zero of a Simurgh event.

That had been helped, no doubt, by Sundancer's showing during the Leviathan attack. I guess being instrumental in doing some of the worst damage that had ever been done to an Endbringer tended to make the people in charge be willing to overlook a lot of other stuff.

"Anyway," Jess was saying as she moved her wheelchair around, orienting toward the exit from the waiting room. "I thought I'd wait for you to get done and see if you wanted to get some lunch. Mars is off on patrol with Kayden, so I'm stuck all by my lonesome."

I smiled at that. "Mmmm, you said the magic word. Lunch. Yeah, let's do that eating thing."

I'd gotten to know Jess a lot more over the past few weeks, considering Mars and I were pretty much her only remaining friends. Most people tended to avoid people who had been around the Simurgh, for obvious reasons, which left out anyone who knew her in the PRT. And pretty much everyone else the girls knew had been the rest of the Travelers.

She was a cool person, who had apparently been into Earth-Bet culture even before their group had been dumped here. She had also been a cape-geek, and was apparently the Travelers' primary source of knowledge about this world for some time after they had arrived.

We used the tunnel to leave the PRT headquarters. It was a semi-secret (in the sense that most people knew a tunnel existed, but not where it was or where it led to) way in and out of the building that led to a small two-story private office building supposedly belonging to a nonexistent law firm. Mostly it was just a way to let people like the Wards go in and out in civilian clothes without being seen.

After leaving the fake office building, we settled on eating Chinese at a place a couple blocks away. While we made our way there, I talked to Jess about what had happened the night before. "How do you think they knew the patrol route Theo and I were using? I mean, obviously Lung's whole deal there was to force a fight to make up his reputation, but how'd they know where we were gonna be?"

Jess rolled along in silence for a minute, looking contemplative. "Maybe they had eyes on you from somewhere? You know, just people standing around watching until they spotted you on patrol, then worked out a good place to set up based on your direction?"

I considered that before nodding. "Makes sense. Seems like a lot of wasted effort to go through though, especially since I doubt that whole thing did much to help Lung's rep." Smiling, I added while tapping Jalopy in his hidden wristband form. "Mostly thanks to this little guy."

Jess was grinning. "No kidding. I just wish we'd been there to see the whole thing."

"It was... ahhh, nasty." I swallowed at the memory of the tiny buzz saws boring into Lung's eyes, shuddering a little. "I need to go back to Riley and see if he needs his acid refilled or whatever."

"I take it no one else knows about him, or who built him? I mean, no one official. Obviously the Wards and your guardians know."

"Hell no." I shook my head emphatically. "Just you two, the Wards, Battery, and Assault. You know how fast the people in charge would take him away if they knew where he came from?"

"So what'd you tell Armsmaster about what happened, and how you managed to survive that long?"

I shrugged at that. "The usual. I told him I had help from Dinah and Pandora's group, but I didn't want to say more because it might endanger someone, and I made promises to keep certain things secret. It wasn't a lie, exactly. He _is_ help from Dinah and Pandora's group, and saying more about it might be **very** dangerous. I'm not sure what might happen if Armsmaster got the bright idea to try and take him away from me. The little guy's, ahhh, pretty devoted to his job."

Both of us shuddered at that thought, as we reached the entrance to the restaurant. Our conversation turned away from sensitive subjects, instead focusing on some movie from Earth Aleph that was finally being imported after being held back for a couple years. Jess was excited, since she'd been waiting for it to come out back when she lived there, and then the Simurgh had happened.

"You know," I pointed out after we were brought to the table and the waitress walked away to get our drinks. "You're awfully excited about a comic book movie for someone who's pretty much _**part of**_ a comic book."

Adjusting her wheelchair up into the space that the two other chairs had been before the waitress had removed them, Jess rolled her eyes while replying in a low voice. "It's not the same. Besides, Earth Aleph doesn't have near the number of capes that this place does. So there's still actual superhero stories that get made into movies. The first time I read the comic this one's based on, I was eleven."

"So you liked it, I guess?" I asked while looking at the menu that had been provided.

She chuckled a little, looking at her menu. "It was what got me interested in superheroes, which is what made me start paying attention to..." Her voice lowered to a whisper. "... you know, stuff over here."

Clearing her throat after a moment, Jess shrugged. "Anyway, that's the book that made me start paying attention to all this stuff, and I was really looking forward to the movie. Then... well, you know what happened, and this place hasn't let it be imported for awhile."

"I wonder why..." I pondered. "I mean, we have real superheroes. Why would they block it?"

Jess raised an eyebrow at me. "You don't know? The whole story is about how these superheroes that came out in the forties and fifties aren't allowed anymore. The government outlawed vigilantes, because they thought the heroes were doing as much damage as the villains or whatever."

"Ah." I winced then. "I guess that explains why they might resist letting something like that come out here. The Protectorate's PR people have a hard enough job keeping everyone out of trouble."

We went quiet as a blonde girl in a brown leather jacket approached, expecting her to pass us on the way to the restroom. Instead, the girl tugged out the chair next to me and sat down. "So, did we order yet?"

I blinked, looking toward Jess, who looked just as confused. "Err, I'm sorry, do we..."

The blonde raised a single, slender eyebrow at me. "Oh don't say you haven't recognized me yet." Her lips curved into a familiar vulpine smile.

That smile. I mentally added a mask to cover the sprinkling of light freckles, and a different hairstyle. "Tat-" I started to exclaim before lowering my voice into a hiss. "Tattletale? What are you doing?"

She pressed a finger to her lips. "Shh, call me Lisa. Tattletale seems a little... attention-getting."

I shook my head with another glance at Jess. "What are you doing here, Ta—Lisa?"

"Ah, well see, I figured since I already know who both of you are out of costume, it was only fair that you get to see who I am?" She offered with a sly grin that made it obvious that wasn't even close to the real reason for her approach. "Madison for obvious reasons, and Jess because, well, she didn't exactly wear a costume while we were both working for you-know-who."

"I told the others we should've slept somewhere else." Jess spoke dryly before lifting her head to examine the blonde girl. "So what are you _really_ doing here?"

Before Tattletale could respond, the waitress reappeared with our sodas. She was surprised by the blonde girl's appearance, but quickly took her drink order and disappeared once more to fetch it.

Once the woman was gone for the moment, the Undersider sat back to regard us. "Okay, so besides wanting to have a sit down chat with a couple of famous heroes since we're no longer enemies and all..." She winked at us. "I thought it'd be a good idea to to give you a heads up."

"A heads up on what?" I couldn't think of what she could possibly want to warn either of us about.

The waitress returned with Tattletale's iced tea, and then asked if we were ready to order. Both Jess and I already knew what we wanted, and the blonde girl apparently knew without ever glancing at a menu. We ordered, and once the woman was gone again, Tattletale continued talking. "You know that tinker we were looking for?"

I lowered my voice even more, to a whisper. "The one that was working with Defiant and Teacher? The tinker that improves other tinker's work? Umm, what was his name?"

"Eddie." She supplied the name easily. "Vacate's old buddy. Anyway, we've been trying to track him down this whole time. He's... slippery."

"Is he still working with Defiant?" They never had managed to pin down Trickster's clone, though he was still occasionally showing up at crime scenes, apparently fighting bad guys. It was confusing, and a little sad. He did stuff like threaten to blow up a bunch of people if I didn't willingly go into the Birdcage, but then he also risked his freedom to rescue people that were in trouble, knowing that the PRT wanted to grab him. The guy was obviously _**trying**_ to be a hero, but his connection to Noelle and Krouse wasn't leaving him alone. He needed... well, he needed help, but I had no idea how he could possibly get it. He was messed up.

"We're not sure." Tattletale admitted. "But we do know one person Eddie _is_ working with."

Jess took a sip from her drink before setting it down as she guessed, "Marquis?"

The blonde girl visibly deflated. "Aww, you're supposed to wait and let me tell you."

I tried not to snicker too much while Jess smiled and shrugged. The former Traveler pointed at Tattletale. "You're not the only one who can put two and two together. This Eddie guy seems like someone that needs a boss. He's got a power like that and he isn't a billionaire already? Yeah, he's the type that has to have a leader. Lung and his pack of psychopaths doesn't seem like the right kind of fit. But Marquis probably sought him out. I mean, they escaped using one of his teleportation devices in th first place, right? So Marquis probably found him and offered him protection, a lab, and whatever."

Tattletale sulked a little bit, sipping her drink. "Okay, fine, take some of my news away. But I bet you don't know the other thing I came to warn you about."

I glanced to Jess first, who shrugged, before looking back to Tattletale. "What is it?"

Reaching inside her brown jacket, the Undersider took out a manilla envelope and tossed it onto the table in front of me. "We found Eddie's last hidey hole, and those were inside."

Blinking, I reached out to open the envelope, tugging out what turned out to be a stack of photographs. When I turned them over, the first thing I saw was Marissa. She was stepping out of a cab, the photo obviously taken from across the street. "Err..." I turned to the next picture, finding one of Jess sitting in line at some kind of store. Quickly, I flipped through the pile. There were about twenty pictures, all taken of various Travelers. Most of them were of Marissa and Jess, though there were pictures of Krouse, Luke, and even a couple of someone that I was guessing had to be Oliver.

I let Jess see them, and the other girl's eyes widened with each photograph. "What the hell?"

"Yup." Tattletale seemed a little happier now that she had actually surprised both of us with something. "Seems like the Travelers have an admirer. Or a stalker." She nodded toward one of the photographs. "Look on the back there."

I picked up the picture and turned it over, laying it between us. There were words and numbers scribbled all over the back. I squinted down at them. "It looks like... measurements and... materials?"

Jess had stiffened in her chair. "I know those figures. It's a vault. Or... a cage. He's trying to work out the right measurements for a cage that'll hold something really powerful." She glanced up to me. "Or someone."

"Noelle." I supplied. "He's trying to work up the measurements for a cage that'll hold Noelle? That's... why he was stalking all of you, isn't it?"

"That's our guess." Tattletale put in. "Seems Eddie's a little obsessed with the idea. There's all kinds of notes about what materials he might use, even the names of a couple tinkers that specialized in that sort of thing that he was trying to contact."

"So Eddie," I began. "Is working for Marquis, and he's trying to figure out a way to contain Noelle, and probably find out where she is." I frowned then. "Is this a good thing or a bad thing?"

"Bad thing." Jess shook her head. "Trust me, this guy won't be able to contain her. Not if she gets upset. Doesn't matter how good of a tinker he is. And if he pisses her off too much..."

I whistled low. "Right, rampaging evil clone generator is _probably _a **very** bad thing." Then I frowned. "Wait, we haven't been able to find them for weeks. You don't think..."

Jess's eyes widened. "Oh... shit. If that's what happened, if they're with Marquis..."

In contrast to us, Tattletale seemed almost amused as she took a slow, deliberate sip from her iced tea. "If they're with Marquis, Lung's going to get a really big surprise if he keeps trying to push this gang war much further."

Before I could respond to that, the phone buzzed in my pocket. I winced. "Uhh, hold that thought for just a second."

Leaning back, I tugged it out and looked at the screen, blinking at the display. "Err, it's Panacea." Shrugging, I answered the phone. "Amy?"

"Yeah, it's me." Amy's voice was so quiet I could barely hear her. She was obviously whispering. "Listen, you're the one who talked to Victoria, right?"

I hesitated. "Uhh, I said she should sit down and talk to you..." I really hoped I hadn't crossed too much of a line.

"Thanks." Amy actually sounded grateful. "We... talked. It helped. But... I kind of really need you to do me a favor now."

"What's that?" I asked carefully, glancing at the other two.

"You convinced Vicky to talk to me, and it helped a lot. But it made me realize that... there's someone else I need to talk to."

"Oh... Listen, Amy, if this is about your dad-"

"No," her whisper cut me off. "No. Not him. It's about... Pandora. I want you to take me to talk to Pandora."

**16.04**

A couple hours later, I stood two blocks away from the motel that functioned as Dinah's S-Club House. Amy and Victoria were beside me, the latter apparently flat out refusing to let Amy go anywhere by herself, even if she did agree to help her sneak away from the other people that were supposed to be keeping an eye on her.

"Okay, Victoria, before I show you guys where we're going, there's a few rules." I turned to face the blonde girl. "You follow them, or you don't come in."

She stiffened beside me. "I'm not letting Amy visit that clone without me."

"And I'm not letting you take your hair-trigger temper and tendency to treat 'punch it in the face' as the solution for every problem in the world in there until you agree to keep a lid on it. Pandora is on our side, but she also thinks very differently than we do. Plus..." I let out a breath. "Riley's in there."

"Who—wait." Victoria's eyes widened suddenly. "You mean _**that**_ Riley? Oh fuck no. Amy, we're leaving." She started to back away, hand clutching her adopted sister's arm.

"No, Vicky." Amy resisted, shaking her head. "I have to talk to Pandora." She bit her lip then before looking at me. "You mean... Bonesaw, don't you? I didn't know she was still around. I thought she left."

"That's because she hasn't been doing anything to hurt people." I pointed out, looking at the older blonde girl who still looked like she was about a second away from scooping up Amy and taking off. "Dinah is helping her, just like she's helping Pandora. But if _**either**_ of you are going to endanger that, you're not going in. It's... a sensitive situation."

"She's not a lost, innocent little puppy that was just misunderstood, Madison." Victoria all but growled at me. "She's a monster. We shouldn't even be this close. Actually, there should be an entire squad here to bring her in. You know, because in case you forgot, **she's a bad guy.**"

I shook my head. "She's not doing anything bad now, Victoria. She's been working with Pandora, she's just... it's complicated. Dinah said it was okay to bring you, as long as I make sure you understand that if you cause problems now, if you ruin this... peace we've got, you will be responsible for either unleashing a plague of pissed off, immoral Pandoras across the entire city, bringing the Slaughterhouse Nine here and eliminating **any possibility **of bringing the world's most powerful bio-tinker back onto our side, or quite possibly... both."

"You don't have to _like it, _Vicky, but you _**do **_have to put up with it. Like it or not, Riley is off limits. She's not hurting anyone right now. She's... she's acting like a friend. She's acting more human than the monster you're thinking of, so whatever Dinah's doing, whatever just being here and away from the rest of the Nine is doing, it's **working.** And I am not going to let you endanger that, period."

Victoria's gaze was hot as she glared at me, clearly not liking any of this. "You could have mentioned this before we got here."

"Yeah well, I was kind of rehearsing how I was going to explain any of it." I admitted with a shrug. "Look, it's like Amy said. She didn't even know that Riley was still in town. Neither did you. So obviously, she hasn't been doing the Bonesaw thing. You don't get to walk into prison and punch the people in there in the face for what they did before they were locked up. You don't get to walk up to Penance and punch her in the face for what she did before. And in this case, you don't get to punch Riley either. She's rehabilitating, so just leave her alone. If you can't do that, you're not coming in."

Victoria folded her arms and looked at me for a long moment, before turning to Panacea. "God damn it, this is a bad idea. It's a very fucking bad idea. You really, really have to go in there?"

Amy, who had looked nervous before, now looked plain terrified. "I... I need to. I need to do this. I can do it. Let's just..." Her voice cracked slightly at the last part. "...go in. Please."

Letting out a sigh, Victoria nodded before turning to me. "Fine, you have my word I won't attack anybody in there _unless_ they pose a direct and immediate threat to anyone else, **especially** my sister."

"Good enough." I started across the street. "This way then." We walked down the street, passing two other cheap motels on the way before reaching the right one. Just as we stepped around the corner and into the parking lot, a high pitched revving noise drew our attention down toward a simple RC car with a digital camera duct-taped onto the top of it, and a cell phone taped next to that.

"Hi." Emma's soft voice spoke from the phone, before the remote control car reversed and spun around to face the opposite direction. "Thi... this way." Over the past few weeks, my... friend's stutter had gotten progressively better. She still had little in the way of confidence, and she still stumbled with her words sometimes, especially when she was nervous, but it was getting better every time I visited.

She'd probably never be quite the _**same**_ Emma, but then, I wasn't the same Madison either. I'd become a better person, a better version of myself. Emma was getting there too. She just needed time.

As we walked, I glanced up toward what looked like a simple bird of prey sailing overhead. Genesis was flying cover, making sure that none of us were followed. I gave her a brief thumbs up before going in.

Emma's RC car rolled through a doorway at the end of the building that was already propped open, then continued past the stairs and toward what looked like it had been a restaurant attached to the motel at one time. The place had obviously been closed down and completely unused for years.

There were no tables or chairs left in the restaurant, and the place was only lit by what was able to come in through the filthy windows. As the three of us entered, the RC car spun around once more to look back at us, before Emma's voice spoke up again. "Umm... wait... here, pl... please."

Sighing, Victoria tugged out her cell phone and looked down at it before blinking. "Hey, my phone won't turn on!"

"Err..." The RC car seemed to shrink backwards as Emma admitted, "I'm blocking it. I... I've... sort of... been blocking all your phone signals since you got umm... since you got within a couple blocks. So... so th-they couldn't track... track you... here..."

Victoria looked annoyed by that, but before she could speak, the door into the kitchen opened and the shadowy figure of Pandora emerged. She stood framed in the doorway briefly, before walking our way.

If Vicky had been tense before, she was a primed bomb now. The older girl stepped in front of her sister, scowling at the figure that approached. "That's close enough, clone."

"Victoria," I hissed at her. "Stop it." Then I focused on the other girl. "Pandora, thanks for being here."

"We are always here." The girl spoke simply while taking another step that brought her into the light. She wasn't wearing her mask, leaving her face uncovered so that the similarity between her and Panacea could be easily seen as she looked to the girl that could have been her twin. "It is your presence that is new, Panacea-Sister."

"Don't call her that." Victoria all but growled. "She's not your sister. You're just a-"

"Victoria." Amy touched the other girl's shoulder. "Please, go... sit down. I'm okay. I need to talk to Pandora, not to your back." When Vicky looked like she was going to object, Amy added, "If she wanted to hurt me, there isn't much you could do about it, Vick. Please, just... just let us talk."

Grimacing, Victoria took a single step away, closer to me. She muttered, "I don't like this."

"It was her choice." I whispered back. "Her idea." I had no idea why Amy wanted this meeting.

For a moment, Pandora and Panacea stood facing one another in silence, their expressions difficult to make out in the dimly lit room. Finally, it was Amy who spoke. "You're my clone."

"We are." Pandora agreed.

"You're supposed to be evil." Amy observed. "That's... what Sundancer and Genesis said, that the clones that Noelle makes are evil."

Pandora lifted her chin at that, saying simply, "We are different. Circumstances have altered our biological imperatives, allowing us to make our own choices. We choose to assist Dinah-Friend."

"You still kill people," Amy pointed out. "Even if they are bad guys, they don't get a trial. You just... you kill them. How many have you killed? Do you... do you even know?"

"Pandora have killed three hundred and thirty-two individuals since our conception. Iota-Self has killed thirty two since her conception."

Amy obviously blanched at that, before blinking. "Iota? Who's... Iota?"

Pandora lifted her hand to indicate herself. "We are Pandora. I... am Iota."

That was news to me. I blinked, reflexively asking, "You have individual, distinct selves?"

"We are all Pandora." She answered me with a glance. "But we are also different."

It was actually Victoria who got it, speaking up next to me. "Iota, like the Greek alphabet? Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, that sort of thing?"

"We are Pandora." The clone nodded. "Alpha to Sigma."

"There's... eighteen of you?" Amy asked after pausing as though doing some quick mental calculations. "I... I thought you were all interchangeable. I thought you were..." She trailed off before shaking her head. "Never mind. I... I wanted to say a couple things. First... I wanted to ask... why you kill people. Why do you have to go out and kill them?"

I tensed at the question, but Pandora just seemed to consider it for a moment before answering. "We are driven to improve ourselves through the biological assimilation of others. While your abilities are devoted toward improving others, ours are devoted to the biological improvement of ourselves. We have chosen to direct that impulse toward the elimination of worthless, evil individuals, but it cannot be entirely ignored. It is our compulsion to eliminate the weak and increase our own strength. It is our choice to do so only with criminals, those who would harm others or ourselves."

Amy went quiet, seeming to study her clone curiously for several long seconds. Finally, she spoke hesitantly. "You're... my clone. You're another version of me. And... and the idea that I had... that there was a version of me that was going around and killing people, it made me feel... like... like you were evil. Which... made me feel like... I could be that evil, because you were another version of me."

"Amy, you could never be-" Victoria started to say before Amy held up a hand to stop her, not looking away from Pandora.

"I... kind of... hated you because you made me think that that's what I could be like... that I could be a monster that killed everyone that I didn't like. Especially after I found out who my... my real father is." Amy took in a long breath before letting it out. I saw her trembling even more while she forced the words to continue. "That's some of it. But mostly, I was... I hated you because you reminded me of being helpless. I was... taken away... im... imprisoned by a horrible man who... who made me watch him kill a helpless little girl. I thought it was Dinah, but... but it must have been another clone. I just... when I saw you, I started remembering all of that. I remembered the... the... poor girl, with the massive... body that they wanted me to heal, and I couldn't do it. I remembered... all those things. Mainly I remembered being helpless, being..." She swallowed hard. "Being pathetic and not able to do anything to help that little girl. I just... you reminded me of how worthless I felt."

Victoria remained silent beside me, her eyes wide with surprise at how her adopted sister had thought of herself. Her mouth opened a couple of times as though she wanted to speak up, wanted to dispute the other girl's thoughts and feelings, but she restrained the urge and stayed quiet.

"But," Amy continued. "After I talked to Victoria about... about how unfair I was being to people who were trying to take care of me, trying to protect me... Aunt Sarah came in." She glanced to her sister and added, "It was after you left."

"Aunt Sarah... she talked about... about Carol. She said that... that the reason Carol couldn't ever... really let herself love me like her own daughter was because... because she couldn't let go of something that happened to them when they were younger. She said that Carol saw me... as a reminder of how helpless she'd been, because my real father reminded her of the man who hurt them. She hated my father because of who he reminded her of, and she couldn't... or wouldn't let that go enough to know that I wasn't that person, that where I came from wasn't my fault."

She was still trembling, still clearly nervous and upset, but Amy took a step closer to Pandora, who remained silent and still. "That was... when I realized that... that I was doing the exact same thing to you. I was shunning you, ordering you to leave me alone, to never... come anywhere near me, because you reminded me of being helpless, for reasons that you couldn't change any more than I could. Where you came from... what... made you, isn't your fault."

"It... made me understand some of why it was so hard for Carol. But... I don't want to treat you that way. I... don't want to make anyone feel like that."

I saw Amy's eyes close as her head shook a little briefly. "I'm not... I can't promise anything. You still really, really scare me. You... what you can do, what you've done and what you could still do... it... it terrifies me. But... but you haven't. For all the killing you've done, you could have done so much more. You kept your word, you haven't killed innocents. You're not... a mindless monster. You kept your promise. You have thoughts and... and feelings. And I... I kept rejecting you. You called me sister, and I rejected you so much. I rejected you even more than Carol rejected me. At least she took care of me. She raised me, even though she couldn't forget where I came from. I just... threw you away and tried to ignore you, just because of how you made me feel."

Gulping, her nerves and fear obvious, Amy nonetheless reached out and took Pandora's hand, lifting it up between them before interlacing their fingers as she stared at her clone. "I'm scared of you. I'm scared of what you could do, and what you remind me of. But... but I'm going to try. I'm going to try to... to do better, to talk to you a little bit and... and get to know you. Because I don't want to be the person who makes anyone feel the way that I felt every time it was obvious that Carol didn't really want me around. I don't... I can't really blame her for not being able to get over it. It's really hard. And... I can't promise that I'll be able to get past all of it. But I'm going to try. Just give me time, please?"

Pandora gave that familiar sharp jerk of her head in agreement. "We will allow all the time that you require, Panacea-Sister."

I saw Amy's head shake reflexively. "Stop calling me that. I..." She bit her lip, glancing toward Victoria and me before looking back to her clone. "Amy. Not Panacea. I'm Amy."

Pandora's head tilted curiously before she spoke again, her voice questioning. "Amy-Sister?"

The other girl bit her lip, clearly hesitating for a moment before nodding. "Amy-Sister."

The two stood in front of each other, hands clasped between them, for a long moment. I couldn't tell what either of them were thinking, but they still seemed to be communicating in some way.

Abruptly, Pandora broke their apparent connection, turning to face the door. "Emma-Friend is upset."

Sure enough, the door slammed open a second later, and Emma came rushing in. She was accompanied by Dinah. Both of them had obviously been running to get here.

"Emma?" I looked that way and frowned. "Why didn't you just talk through your little car thing?"

"Had... had to... talk in... in person..." She panted, bending over to clutch her knees as she gasped for breath. "Had to... show... show you..."

Dinah reached out, taking what looked like a small phone from Emma before holding it up in front of me. For a moment, I just gazed at the screen, mouth falling open in horror. "It's... it's... oh god..."

"What?" Amy was staring at us. "What is it?"

"The news... it's about... it's about an Endbringer attacking Maine." I said slowly. "They need help."

"Endbringer?" Victoria demanded, eyes wide at the thought of one of those beasts attacking the area her boyfriend was in. "Which one?" Her voice turned urgent. "Madison, which one is it, Simurgh or Behemoth?"

Slowly, I lifted my gaze from the screen to shake my head, my voice dull. "Neither. It's something new. It's... another... Endbringer."

**16.05**

"Where were you guys?!" Chris demanded as Victoria, Amy, and I came sprinting into the teleport arrival and departure room at the PRT building after a brief pit stop to change into our costumes. He and the rest of the team were standing around waiting for us.

Victoria and Amy both looked at me, and I hesitated. "Err, we were... out of contact for a few minutes. Sorry, we just had to do something else. What... ummm... what do we know so far?"

Before anyone else could answer that, Battery approached from the other side of the room, where the Protectorate team was still getting situated. "Are you all right? We couldn't contact you for a few minutes, and with this..." I saw her swallow thickly. "... this new Endbringer... I was worried."

"I'm fine. We're fine. We just had to do something." I assured Sam, stepping over to hug her briefly.

She looked somewhat surprised by the gesture right out there in the open, but returned it after a second. "You had to do something with Glory Girl and Panacea?"

"And Jess." I nodded and lowered my voice to a whisper. "Amy wanted to talk to Pandora." When Sam's eyes widened with surprise at that, I added, "It's okay. She just wanted to talk. It turned out... all right. No need to sound the alarm or anything."

"Good." Sam visibly sighed. "There's enough bad happening already. We don't need that right now."

I winced at the sound of the worry in her voice. "What do we know so far? The news wasn't exactly clear except for the fact that it's one we've never seen before. How do we know it's an Endbringer and not just a really powerful cape?"

"We don't even know for sure that Endbringers **aren't** just really powerful capes." Sam pointed out. "We don't really know anything about where they come from. But this thing... it's definitely in their league. We haven't seen much footage yet, but what there is..."

"What does it do?" I pressed. "What does it look like?"

Before she could respond to that, Armsmaster called out, "Everyone, Wards and Protectorate, form up here! Let's get on the same page about what we know before our lift shows up."

Both teams moved in, and I took a second to grab Marissa's hand. "Did Jess tell you what happened?"

She nodded, squeezing my hand in return as she whispered, "Sounds like it went pretty well. Is Pandora coming to this? I... I really think we could use the help."

"They said they have their own way there." I answered quietly. The recent revelation, that each Pandora we saw was their own individual person (at least to an extent), had made me wonder just how it affected them all when one body was killed. Did they just reform, or was that the end of that identity?

"Listen up!" Armsmaster called for attention as soon as everyone had gathered. "Here's what we know. This is what we're dealing with." He pointed to the wall, and the lights dimmed briefly before an image showed up on the screen that made several people gasp.

The slightly blurry picture showed what looked like the main street of a relatively small town, with a post office, gas station, court house, and bar all visible on either side. But in the middle of the picture, taking up most of the frame, a figure hovered just off the ground.

From the buildings and cars around it, the thing looked like it was around twenty or twenty-five feet tall. Most of what could be seen was little more than what looked like a towering black cloak hovering several feet off the ground. The cloak billowed out to each side, casting shadows over the surrounding area. At the top of the cloak, a hood covered most the figure's head, though what little could still be seen resembled the narrow snout of a coyote or a jackal more than a human face.

Much more disturbing were the dozens of figures on the ground, under the shadows of the cloak as though sheltered by it. Some were walking, others crawling, but all of them were very clearly...

"Dead." Victoria spoke my own thoughts aloud. "Those... those people under the thing, they're... dead. Look at them, they're... rotting... the... bones... the... oh god." She sounded like she was about to be sick. I really couldn't blame her.

"Yes." Armsmaster nodded at that. He was clearly making a deliberate attempt to sound professional and analytical. "We don't have a name for this thing yet, but... that's what it does. Anything that's dead, if its shadow passes over the body... even in their grave, it animates them. What you're seeing here is only the small group it keeps with it. The creature passed over a cemetery before the local team understood what its capabilities were. Now there are a few hundred of those things running around."

"Zombies." Dennis spoke up from nearby, his voice dull. "This thing makes... fucking zombies."

"Wards," Armsmaster looked to us. "You will stay away from this thing. We don't know the extent of its abilities yet, but it's too dangerous to have you run straight in. Your job is to evacuate civilians and deal with the..." He grimaced at the word. "... zombies that the creature sends out into the surrounding area. If we determine that one or any of your abilities would be useful against this thing, we'll call you in. For the time being, focus on clean-up duty so that the Protectorate can devote our attention to the monster itself."

Rather than argue, Victoria nodded, eyes focused on the picture of the massive hooded figure. "Do we have any idea what it's trying to do or what it's focused on?"

"You mean do we know why what looks like a brand new Endbringer focused on a few small towns in Maine?" Armsmaster translated. "No. We have no idea what this thing is doing, or why it showed up there. It doesn't appear to have a specific goal or destination other than passing over and animating as many dead bodies as it can, before sending them out to kill people and create even more bodies for it."

"How tough is the thing?" Assault spoke up. "Does it have any... you know, direct attacks? How hard have we hit it so far?"

"We don't know its capabilities other than the death animation," Armsmaster admitted. "As for how hard they've hit it... trust me, there's a reason they're calling it an Endbringer. Energy attacks just seem to be absorbed into that cloak without doing anything, and whenever anyone with an Alexandria package gets close enough to try to hit it, they describe feeling so cold and... frightened that they have to get away as fast as they can."

"So some form of emotion manipulation." Penance folded her arms as she stood next to Reach and Aid.

"Seems like it." Miss Militia nodded and then sighed. "But as Armsmaster said, we really don't know what the full extent is. That's why the Wards are going to join up with the local team and focus on clearing out the surrounding minions and evacuating any remaining civilians."

"Panacea." The man looked to where Amy was standing somewhat behind Crystal and Victoria. "We have a spot to start you in where they've set up a temporary base camp to bring the injured. Genesis's human body is going to be there as well, and Ruin will be responsible for keeping the creatures off you. They're all still biological, so her power should keep you in the clear."

After getting a nod of agreement from all three girls, Armsmaster looked down at his watch. "According to Dragon, we've got five minutes before our transport gets here. He had to make a stop off to get the Chicago team, and they're running late. So if anyone has anything else to say to each other before we go, now's the time."

Marissa squeezed my hand and leaned down to whisper to me. "Hey, be careful, got it? No getting into too much trouble. I kind of like having you around."

"That goes for you too." I turned a little to embrace her fully. "Be careful, Mars. You're the one that's getting closer to that... thing, whatever it is. They're gonna see if your sun can hurt it, but don't..." I swallowed back the fear. "Don't get hurt, please."

Her hand came up to tenderly touch my face through the mask. "You know I'll be careful." Then Marissa gave me a little push. "Now talk to your guardians. They deserve your attention too."

I did so, moving to where Ethan was. As I approached, the man turned a broad smile to me, clearly doing his best to lighten the somber mood. "Hey, guess we get first crack at a new Endbringer, huh? If it even is one of those fuckers. Think we'll bring it down?"

"You'll kick its ass. I bet you-" I started to joke, before falling silent as my throat caught. I couldn't joke about it. Not right now. This... thing was a monster. If it _**was**_ a new Endbringer, we didn't even know how to fight it. "I..." Shaking my head, I quickly embraced Ethan.

He looked even more surprised by the hug than Sam had been, but I felt him return it a moment later. "What's this for?"

"Be..." I tightened the hug as my throat caught again. "Be careful, Ethan. Please. My... the last... Endbringer... when Leviathan..."

"Your parents." He breathed out and then hugged me even more. "Hey, it's gonna be okay. We'll make it out. We'll be fine. I don't dare get killed, Ewok. You know how tough Sammy is. She'll cross over to the afterlife and kick my ass if I did."

Sobering after a moment, he used a hand to tilt my chin up. "It'll be okay. You're not gonna lose us, not like this. Trust me, all right?"

"He's right." Sam had approached by then, standing next to her husband. "I would beat his ass blue and drag him back here if he let anything happen to himself. You just take care of your team."

Swallowing, I nodded slowly. "Just please come back. I need you guys. You're..." I hesitated, glancing down briefly to gather myself. "When... when I lost my parents... I... I was completely... ruined, and I didn't think I could ever move on. I'm not over it, I don't think I ever will be, completely... but... I'm doing better than I thought I could, and that's mostly because of you guys. You're pretty much the best guardians I could have asked for. You... really care about me, and I needed that more than just someone taking me in because their boss told them to."

Sam flinched a little before pulling me into a tight embrace. "We do care about you, Maddy. We'll all be careful, and we'll all come back, got it?"

As I was nodding, Ethan spoke up. "That goes for you too, Hunter." I could see Ruin standing nearby, watching us. She looked surprised at the sound of her name, glancing at the man, who nodded. "Yeah, I'm talking to you. I know you're pretty much the ultimate zombie killer, but be careful. We like having you around too. Both of you take care of yourselves." He pointed at Hunter. "That means no taking unnecessary risks. You protect Panacea and Jess, but you also protect yourself."

Hunter hesitated for a second, still looking a bit surprised at being singled out that way, before nodding. Her lips pressed tightly together as she looked away from us. I didn't know if she was embarrassed or confused, but either way, she looked uncertain.

Giving Ethan and Sam a moment together, I stepped that way. "Hey, they're right. He's right. Be careful. Your power is pretty much perfect for killing the already dead things, but... that doesn't mean you're untouchable. I kinda like having you around too, and... I really don't want to lose anyone else. Please be careful?" When she nodded, I quickly embraced her. "Everyone's gotta make it out of this. I can't... lose anyone else I care about during an Endbringer attack. I just... I need you guys."

Poor Hunter was still and stiff at first, but she finally gave me an awkward hug. Her head shook as she pointed to herself, then to me and then made a fist.

I smiled a little bit, as much as I could. "I'll be careful too. I promise."

Dennis found me next. "Keep everyone safe, all right?" He used a fist to push against my shoulder. "And say hi to Dean for me?"

I gave him a quick hug as well. "You'll say it yourself as soon as the fight's over. We'll all meet up and talk over food. You can tell him and Carlos all about your argument with Armsmaster."

He chuckled softly. "Guy still wants me to change my name. Says Clockblocker might've worked for a teen team, but now I'm an adult and I need to have a better name, a name that inspires hope, strength, and blah blah blah."

"Weren't you planning on changing it anyway?" I asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Sure, but that was before he tried to tell me I had to." Dennis shook his head with a little smirk. "Now I kind of wanna to keep it forever just to spite him."

Snorting at that, I gave him a shove. "Whatever you call yourself, just be careful. You're the one that has to get close enough to these things to touch them." I swallowed then, trying to downplay the fear I felt for everyone that I cared about. "Take care of yourself, Dennis."

Manpower, standing by the door called out, "Uninitiated capes coming in! Everyone who still wears masks should put them back on."

I glanced that way, while everyone who wasn't already wearing the face covering parts of their costumes did so. A moment later, a familiar woman in a welder-like mask stepped through the doorway.

"Faultline." Armsmaster spoke up, while the rest of her crew filed in behind her. "I didn't really expect to see your group here."

The mercenary woman just regarded him for a moment. "What is it the Protectorate says? Endbringers are a problem for the whole world. We're a part of that world too."

Newter, standing behind his boss, added, "Besides, our current employer's paying good money for us to contribute here."

Obviously shooting him a dirty look, Faultline belatedly nodded. "We're being paid to help, but we're still not taking unnecessary risks. We'll help you clear the streets and avoid civilian casualties, but most of my people aren't suited to direct combat against anything like an Endbringer. Especially a new one."

I could see Labyrinth, the strange, quiet girl in the maze-decorated robe, standing next to Mr. Hebert, whose darkness filled one corner of the room as he glowered at everyone who wasn't part of their team. Her eyes looked up to find me watching her, and she lifted a hand as though waving. After a second, I hesitantly returned the wave, and the girl looked away again, returning her attention to the nearby wall as though something fascinating was written there.

Miss Militia's eyebrow lifted. "Who would this conscientious employer that's sending you out to help against an Endbringer be?"

"Sorry," Faultline clearly wasn't. "That's private information. We don't spoil our employer's identities. Do you want the help or not?"

Armsmaster nodded. "We need it. But I thought you had your own teleporter." He nodded toward Mr. Hebert.

It was Gregor, standing beside the girl with the black clover symbol against the green tee shirt, who answered. "Unfortunately, our friend Murk here can only go about thirty miles in a single jump. He can do several jumps in a row, but we're afraid that going all that way will exhaust him too quickly. It would be much more useful for everyone involved if his abilities were put to use after we were already on site, to evacuate civilians to a safe location."

Armsmaster nodded at that. "You'll work with Panacea then, Murk. Bring people to her that need help, evacuate their group if the danger comes too close to them."

On the far side of the room, the man in a blue and black uniform that I recognized as Strider appeared, looking toward us.

"We're heading out!" Armsmaster called. "Everyone find your teams, line up, and get ready to move the second we drop in."

I moved to join my team, nodding toward Reach. "Looking good." Cassie was wearing her new costume, having finally agreed to move away from what she had worn as Rune. She had apparently preferred the infiltration suit, since this design avoided the robe motif entirely. The outfit consisted of dark green pants with black runic designs running up the side of either leg, a black utility belt with pouches on either side that held more of the same little metal balls that I used, a black form-fitting turtleneck that had those same runic symbols running up her sides, this time in dark green as a complete flip from her lower half, and attached green gloves with black lines. Her boots were pitch black as well, while her black mask covered her head entirely save for the green visor that shielded her eyes, similar to the one that Vista wore.

She gave me a thumbs up. "Glad you decided to join us."

"As if I'd let you do this without me." I scoffed a little before looking toward Victoria. "Guess we're on search and rescue duty, huh?"

"Yup." The blonde girl hesitated a little. "Listen, guys... I'm not used to leading anything. I'm not used to being in charge. Usually it's the people in charge that are stopping me from doing something stupid. But... I'm gonna do the best I can. I'm gonna..." She glanced to me. "... try to see solutions other than 'punch it in the face.'"

I smiled faintly at that. "You'll do fine, Vicky. Just... take the time to think things through."

She nodded once at that, letting out a clearly nervous breath. "Be careful, guys. Everyone just... be careful."

The voice of Strider called out, "Heading in three... two... one..."

And then we were gone.

**Interlude 16 – Flechette**

_Earlier that day _

"Liiiily! Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily!"

The chanting came so fast that the Japanese-American girl whose name was being called could hardly get a word in edgewise, sitting up in her bed just as the eleven-year old girl doing the chanting flung herself bodily onto the bed next to her.

"Whoa, whoa! I'm up, I'm up." Lily laughed, scooting back in the bed to make room for the younger girl. "What's going on, Mika?"

"Your name's fun to say." Mika, her dark hair and pale brown skin a testament to her Native American heritage, lay where she had thrown herself and gazed with wide, expressive eyes up at the girl she had just woken up. "Lily! Liiiiiiiillly! Luh Lil. Lil Luh. Leeeeeeeemmphh."

Using a hand to cover the excitable little girl's mouth, Lily prompted. "Did you need to wake me up for a reason? Other than how fun my name is to say." She tried, yet failed, to contain her smile. It was impossible to be upset with the energetic eleven-year old, even if she had been having a nice dream.

Mika, for her part, nodded before reaching up with both hands to tug Lily's down off of her mouth. "There's a mission! A real life mission. An' guess what." At the last, the girl dropped her voice conspiratorially.

Lily took the bait, smiling in spite of herself as she leaned closer. "What?"

"I get to go!" Mika couldn't contain herself anymore, practically exploding with joy at the thought. "I get to go on the mission! As long as I stay with you and Weld and the others."

Lily, known to the general public as Flechette, couldn't completely stop the pang of fear she felt at the thought of this innocent, joyful little girl seeing the kind of danger that she had. To Mika, playing capes was just that: playing. She was still innocent, and Lily desperately wanted to make sure she stayed that way. Still, if her parents, who had taken Lily into their home and cared for her after the Wards system moved her to Maine, were willing to let her go, it couldn't be that dangerous of a mission. "That's great, Mika. How about you let me get dressed so we can go find out about this mission? Is it a 'go right now' mission, or a 'go after breakfast' mission?"

The answer came from the doorway, as Mika's mother poked her head in. "It's a one little girl needs to learn what 'when Lily wakes up, you can tell her' means type of mission. Come here, Mika. Leave the poor girl alone long enough to collect herself." The woman focused on Lily then, smiling in spite of the gentle rebuke of her daughter. "Take your time. You can shower and then have breakfast. It's just some strange reports from some hikers nearby about animals attacking them." She shook her head. "Shouldn't be too bad, and Mika really wants to start helping."

"Ya know, I _**am**_ sitting right here." The little girl huffed a bit. "You don't hafeta start talking about me like I can't hear you."

"You know what? You're right." Lily shifted her weight a little. "You _**are**_ sitting right here. You know what that means?"

"Uh oh."

Mika started to scramble off the bed, but Lily didn't let her. She grabbed the girl and hauled her back, attacking her sides with her fingers. "It means you've fallen into my tickle trap! Muahaha! The great heroine Sparrow is mine! Mine! Muaaahahahaha!"

Squealing and kicking her legs out, Mika struggled to both escape and, failing that, breathe. "Heeeeeeeeeyyy! Heeeeeeey! You don't aahhhh! You don't have meeeee! I'll never give in!"

"Oh you won't, huh?" Lily made a growling noise and renewed her efforts, tickling the younger girl without relenting for several moments. When she finally stopped, Mika finally lay, gasping for breath from the exertion. "Now do you surrender?"

Mika lay on the bed, panting and red faced from her laughter. It took her a few seconds to get enough breath to respond. "Never." She punctuated this by sticking her tongue out and blowing a raspberry at the older girl, before quickly rolling off the bed. The two silver bracelets that the girl wore lit up with a bright pink light as a soft humming noise started, and she floated up to the ceiling before hovering there triumphantly. "Sparrow escapes!"  
>"Curse you, Sparrow!" Lily shook her fist dramatically at the hovering girl. "I'll get you next time!"<p>

Shaking her head with amusement, Mika's mother turned to start back out of the room. "All super heroes and megalomaniacal villains report for breakfast in fifteen minutes."

Smiling as she cast the covers fully off of herself, Lily rolled out of bed and began to head for the shower to get ready.

Good, a nice, simple mission for Mika to participate in. Animals attacking hikers. They could handle that.

"_**We can't handle this!"**_ The boy known as Chronicler called out to Flechette and the rest of the team as he backpedaled away from a pair of coyotes, flesh already rotting off of their broken bodies. Somehow, the clearly **dead** animals continued to stalk forward.

Their team leader, Weld, shook his head while reaching out a metal hand to bat a rotting bird out of the air as it dove for him. More undead animals littered the ground around the boy, a testament to their seemingly mindless attacks. "We have to. If these things reach a civilian population..."

Lily grimaced at that thought and took a step toward the coyotes stalking toward Chronicler. The ammunition for her heavy arbalest, a needle as long as her arm, was already empowered. She hefted the weapon and waited, the calculations for the speed of the two animals versus the speed of her bolt running automatically in the back of her head so that she knew exactly when to shoot.

The moment came, her secondary power practically shouting in her head that _**now**_ was the time. Flechette released her shot, sending the massive bolt launching forward to sever first one, then both animals' heads at the neck.

It didn't stop them. The pair kept coming forward, sans heads. Something _else_ was animating them other than their own minds.

A swirl of energy that Lily recognized as Chronicler's power swept around her briefly, before solidifying into a semi-solid image of herself, firing the arbalest again. The new shot didn't benefit from her sense of timing, only able to spear one of the animals through the gut, cutting the thing in half.

The other headless animal chose that moment to lunge forward, just as a lithe figure swept into view, already spinning up and around into a full-on airborne round-house kick that tore the leaping coyote in two, sending both halves spinning away.

Sending another shot from her arbalest into the front half of the first coyote, which had still been trying to crawl forward, Lily breathed out. "Thanks for the help, Grace."

Chronicler's head was bobbing rapidly as he tried to catch his breath. "Yeah, what she said."

Straightening from where she had landed, the martial artist heroine nodded. "That's what teams are for." Grace's power greatly enhanced her already skilled fighting ability by lending her superhuman perception of time, agility, and the ability to temporarily imbue parts of her body with invulnerability and greater damage upon striking.

"Incoming!" Gallant, on the other side of the clearing that the group was fighting in, leapt out of the way while calling out a warning. Lily looked up that way, eyes widening at the sight of the bear that came charging into view, half of its face rotted off and one of its limbs missing. Neither seemed to slow the thing all that much, though it did veer off course slightly.

Before the rotting bear could reach any of them, the much smaller figure of Sparrow flew down out of the sky, her wristbands glowing with that pink light while she clutched what looked like a simple wooden walking stick in one hand. The eleven-year old girl landed in a crouch in front of the charging bear, prompting Lily to cry out a warning. "Mika!"

The wooden stick in the girl's hand began to glow similar to her bracelets, while she thrust it up toward the bear. As she did, a bright pink forcefield appeared that caught the bear and stopped it short, leaving the thing to snarl and bite at the energy shield.

Mika, face hidden behind a black mask with a glowing pink smiley face on the front that matched the rest of her costume's motif (black base with glowing pink designs), whimpered a little while refusing to look at the snarling, undead animal. "Please stop it, please stop it, please stop it..." She pled, and Lily had no idea if she was begging the poor, clearly puppeted creature to stop, or asking for one of her older teammates to **make** it stop.

Either way, Gallant picked himself up and moved around the forcefield. His emotion blasts were useless, but the boy had had his armor upgraded. Extending an arm, he began to spray a stream of quick-hardening foam from a semi-hidden barrel just over his wrist. He couldn't carry nearly as much as a PRT officer will a full tank mounted on his back, but there was enough foam to trap the bear before it ran dry and the boy shook his head. "I'm out!"

Flechette had reached Sparrow's side by that point, putting a hand on her arm. "Mika, are you all right?"

As she was touched, the younger girl jumped. She turned her attention that way, whimpering a little. "L-Lily, I... I can't use my forcefield again. It's too soon."

Lily flinched a little at the fear in the girl's voice. In spite of her tender age, Mika Kanse was already being seen as destined for Protectorate greatness, considering her ability to imbue items with various superpowers from what seemed to be an ever-growing list. But there were drawbacks. She could only 'hold' up to five imbued items at a time before needing to depower one item to imbue another. Granting an item a power also took a great deal of time, at least a week at the moment. Which meant that releasing one power dropped the girl to four imbued items for a week while she granted a new power to another item. And beyond all of that, whenever she _did_ use the power from an item that she had imbued, there was a period of recharge time before she could use it again. The time seemed to lessen the more she kept that imbued item around, to the point that the girl could use her beloved flight bracelets with only about thirty seconds of recharge time in between uses, but for something relatively new like the forcefield staff, that time was still almost ten minutes.

Flechette had absolutely no doubt that the Native American girl was going to be incredibly powerful as she grew more accustomed to her versatile power, but right now she was still a child, a fact that many of the older PRT people seemed to forget.

"Sparrow, listen." She said quietly, trying to calm the girl. "You need to go. You need to get out of here."

"No!" Mika's head shook stubbornly, the glowing pink smiley face at odds with the combination of fear and weary determination. "I'm part of the team! I'm not leaving."

Lily tried a different tact. "You need to get help, Mika. You can fly, you can get to the Protectorate and bring them back faster."

"No use!" Weld called out from where he was struggling with the rotting corpse of a deer. "The message just came through. They're occupied with something worse."

Grace deftly avoided a pair of leaping squirrels, performing a sort of flipping spin-kick in mid-dodge that turned one into a spray of guts and blood. The second squirrel tried to jump back at her, but Chronicler's energy solidified into a copy of Grace, destroying that creature as well.

"What's worse than this?" Grace demanded, catching herself on the bloody ground before scanning for new threats.

"This thing, whatever's causing this..." Weld hesitated, glancing toward their youngest member before continuing reluctantly. "They're fighting it. But it's big. It's a huge... black shaped... thing that's just going everywhere. They're trying to stop it, but apparently this thing is strong. It's like a..."

Lily felt a plunging sensation in her stomach as she clasped Mika closer reflexively. "Like an Endbringer?" Could it be? Could yet _**another **_of the abominations have appeared, a fourth horror unleashed upon the world? How long could this go on?

"We have to finish up here." Weld announced, shaking his head. "Then go help them. They're already bringing in others, but..."

"But this is our home now." Chronicler finished. "We've gotta be there to take care of it. Ain't like-"

In mid-sentence, a tawny figure leapt from the bushes. Lily cried out a warning, just as the animated lynx corpse took the boy full in the face, knocking him over backwards with a snarl, ripping and tearing wildly.

Beside her, Mika was screaming, while Gallant and Weld threw themselves that way. The boys tore the body of the lynx off of their teammate, while Lily spun around, forcing Mika to look anywhere else, anywhere but at the spot on the ground where Chronicler had fallen. There was blood, so much blood. Lily heard crying, only realizing belatedly that it was coming from herself as well as the younger girl.

"No, no, no..." Mika whimpered, head shaking as she shook violently in Lily's grasp, her desperation palpable, the blind courage of innocence breaking before the older girl's eyes. "He's okay... he's okay... he's okay. He's all right, right? Right, Lily? Please... please say he's all right. Please, please..."

"Mika..." Chronicler's voice, sounding so deep and gravelly that it was almost unrecognizable, called out.

The little girl freed herself from Flechette's grasp, spinning around to face the boy eagerly. "Ben, you're okay!"

No. Lily realized the second that she turned around. Ben was definitely _**not**_ okay. Portions of his throat had been torn out, his costume ripped through like so much paper. The lynx had... had killed him. Their teammate was dead, yet standing. He was animated just like the animals they had been fighting.

"B... Ben?" Mika's formerly innocent, cheerful voice was broken by horror at the sight. "Y-you... You're..."

"Mika..." Ben continued, shaking his head slowly while the rest of the team stood in frozen terror at what they were seeing. "This... this is your fault." He raised his hand to indicate the ruin of his throat. "Your fault. We were all fine before you had to get powers. You had to be the special one. Can't make poor little Mika move to a new city, gotta make a whole new Wards team juuuust for her. Mika's soooo special, soooo perfect. Mommy and Daddy couldn't let you go, so we had to come play pretend superhero just to keep you happy. You like it now? You think it's fun now? Who's gonna die next just because you were too special to go somewhere else, huh? Grace, Flechette? Who are you gonna get killed next, you selfish little brat?"

"Stop it!" Lily shouted, while Sparrow could do nothing but stand there, shoulders shaking as the little girl sobbed beneath the weight of the accusations that the dead boy was flinging at her. He ignored the call and stalked forward, clearly trying to grab the frozen child.

Weld snapped out of his shock in time to attempt to stop their deceased teammate before he could reach Mika. The metal-skinned boy lashed out with an arm that had been reshaped into a blade, which cut the rest of the way through Chronicler's neck.

The boy's head fell, but his body kept rushing forward. Weld shouted, "Flechette, shoot!"

Bringing her arbalest up belatedly, Lily put herself between Sparrow and the headless corpse. Her shot took the mobile body in the chest, flinging it backwards.

Even then, the familiar swirling energy that was Chronicler's power formed up into a copy of Weld lashing out with his arm-blade right in front of the two girls. It might have cut into Lily, if Gallant hadn't thrown himself in the way, using his metal armor as a shield to block the attack. "Destroy the body!" He grunted while the energy swirled around him, turning into a copy of Gallant that threw _itself _bodily into Lily from the other side, knocking her to the ground with a cry.

Still shaking from her tears, Mika nonetheless grabbed what looked like a little blue ball from the pouch on her belt. "G-g-get away!" She managed to cry out while the ball began to glow with her pink energy, prompting Gallant to fling himself out of the way just as she threw the ball at the headless body.

The ball, glowing brightly as it flew through the air, hit Ben's body and instantly froze it solid. Still, the image-copies of themselves kept forming.

"Grace," Weld avoided an attack from a copy of Flechette. "Break it!"

Before yet another copy of one of their attacks could be summoned, Grace leapt at the body, empowering her fist so that as she struck, the ice statue shattered.

The image-clones vanished instantly, and for a long moment, there was no sound, save for the quiet, heart-broken whimpering of one little girl who had slumped to her knees and taken her smiley-face mask off to stare at the remains of her former teammate.

"I'm sorry." Her voice, the optimism and fearlessness ripped away, leaving little save for the raw, broken anguish, whispered through the eerie silence that had overtaken the area around them. "I'm... really... sorry."

Heart splitting at the sight, Lily took a step and fell to her own knees beside the girl to gather her into her arms. "No, Mika." She whispered. "It's not your fault. It's not your fault."

It didn't seem to help. The little girl didn't respond to the hug. She did nothing but remain limp and motionless, shoulders shaking from her hopeless tears of traumatic grief.

They had to move. They had to get out of here while they could, had to regroup and organize. Mostly, they had to get Mika away from there and back where she belonged, with her parents. But right then, for that moment, Lily couldn't bring herself to do anything more than sit on the ground, clutching the sobbing, broken remains of what had so recently been a bundle of boundless joy and youthful courage, while her own tears fell just as freely.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.


	17. Arc 17: Ordeal

**17.01**

We landed in what appeared to be the back storeroom of a grocery store. By the time I oriented myself and recovered from the jump, Armsmaster was already moving and giving orders. He acted like the teleportation had affected him about as much as stepping through a doorway. He and Miss Militia were moving around, taking boxes of the Endbringer fight armbands and passing them out to everyone.

"Panacea, you and Ruin will be setting up right here, as long as this spot stays relatively safe. If the Endbringer heads this way, we'll move you. Genesis, you can use that back corner there."

"Protectorate, you know your assignments already. The Chicago, New York, and Maine teams are out there, and we've got more coming in as soon as Strider can get to them. Right now, we're the reinforcements, so go reinforce."

"Faultline's people, any search and rescue you can do would be appreciated. Get them back here to be healed, and then see how many Murk can teleport the hell out of this whole area. Murk, take your time and don't get too exhausted. Wait for a full load of as many as you can safely jump with, take them as far as you can, then get back here and rest so you can take another load. You're the best chance we have at evacuating all the people we can without taking away from our ability to bring reinforcements _**in**_."

He focused on us then. "Wards, your Maine counterparts need help extracting from their position. They were up in the woods and got cut off. We already lost one of them. Get out there and bring them back."

My heart leapt into my throat, eyes widening at the news that one of the Wards had been lost. Before I could voice my fear, Glory Girl beat me to it. "Wh-who...?"

It was Miss Militia who answered her, eyes softening a little from the look of grim determination she'd had. "It's not Gallant. It was Chronicler."

That didn't really help. Yes, I was glad that Dean wasn't gone, but I couldn't feel _relief_ about someone else's death. I didn't want **anyone** to die.

"And people..." Armsmaster hesitated before straightening as he went on. "If you see anyone, and I mean anyone, die... destroy the body as thoroughly as you can."

Somewhere behind me, Theo blurted, "What?" Afterward, he looked as shocked about his own outburst as he was by the order to destroy people's remains.

"If they're killed by the Endbringer or its minions, they will turn almost immediately, and they will attack you." The Protectorate leader announced. "It's already happened more than once. There is no bringing them back. Believe me, you will not help them by trying to reason with them. They are _**not**_ that person anymore. They're being controlled by the Endbringer. Ask yourself if you'd want to be used as that thing's puppet just to walk around hurting and killing innocents, or your teammates. If not, then don't subject _**them**_ to it either. Take out the body and keep going."

"One more thing," Miss Militia interjected. "The... zombies that this thing makes, if they're parahumans, they _**can**_ use their powers. Be careful out there."

Cringing, I put the armband on and gave it my name. This already sounded worse than the Leviathan fight. How could we fight something that seemed untouchable, and just kept generating more and more undead minions that were, to it, disposable? And parahuman zombies could use their powers?

Armsmaster's orders interrupted my worrying. "Wards, head out. Your armbands will direct you to your counterparts' location. Get them clear and regroup, then focus on clearing out this thing's minions."

"Anubis." A voice at the door announced. I looked up to see a hero that took me only a second to recognize as Cache, one of the New York Protectorate. He grimaced while looking to Armsmaster. "We're calling it Anubis."

"Anubis then." Armsmaster looked back to us. "Get the other Wards to safety, then follow your armbands directions for where the biggest pockets of Anubis's minions are. Any questions?" When none of us had any (or at least, none that we thought he could answer), he nodded. "Good. Go on then, and be careful."

Following Victoria out of the building and into the parking lot, I took a moment to glance around. There were scattered groups of civilians spread around the lot, being herded into various areas by a few other capes that seemed to be sorting them according to injuries and how urgently they needed to be withdrawn from the area. Panacea, sadly, wouldn't be able to focus on healing many civilians. Except for the most critically injured that she could help, her focus would be on capes that needed to get back to the fight. It had to be.

The town we were in obviously wasn't that large. I would've been surprised if the population was greater than fifteen or twenty thousand. Probably less than that.

Most of the people who weren't obviously hurt were staring off at something in the distance. I looked that way as well, and swallowed at the sight of the dark figure that could barely be seen. From this distance, it almost looked like a black cloud in a vaguely humanoid shape, hovering above a collection of houses as though passing judgment on the inhabitants. Smaller figures darted around the black-cloaked form, some throwing out various colored attacks at the thing. None seemed to even catch its attention. It just hovered there, ignoring every attempt to hurt it.

"Anubis." Missy said from next to me, her voice soft. "He's... he's really there. Another Endbringer."

I lifted a hand, laying it on my teammate's shoulder. "They'll stop him. They'll drive him off."

"Then what?" Chris asked from the other side of me. "They bring out another Endbringer when we figure out how to fight this one? How many more are there? Where the hell are they coming from?"

I swallowed at that, shaking my head. "I don't know. But it's this one we have to deal with now. One fight at a time. One mission."

"She's right." Victoria nodded. "And right now, our mission is to save the other Wards." Then she paused, nose wrinkling. "Does anyone else smell that?"

I'd noticed it as soon as we emerged into the open air. There was a faint scent that permeated the air.

"Tar." Theo put in. "It smells like burning tar and... oranges."

Shaking that off, Victoria tapped her armband. "Directions to the Maine Wards' location." As soon as the voice began to list directions, she pointed. "We'll worry about the smell later. Let's go get them."

It only took ten minutes to locate the other team, given the way we were traveling. As far as we could tell from the updates through the armbands, Anubis wasn't doing anything to openly fight the capes who were trying to stop him. He was just... ignoring them as if they didn't exist. Some of his undead minions were fighting, but the impression was more of an angry dog snapping at a passerby while his negligent owner ignored them both than any real attack.

Basically, this Endbringer seemed completely focused on floating around, raising the dead and then leaving them to commit their own random acts of violence and terror, while shrugging off every attempt to hurt or stop him.

The lack of much in the way of tall buildings, coupled with my own unfamiliarity with the area would have slowed my own movements too much for us to get to where the other Wards were in time. Which meant that I was riding alongside Reach, Vista, and Aid atop a large chunk of cement that Cassie had torn out of the ground to use as a mobile platform. Glory Girl and Kid Win were flying on their own.

"There they are." Victoria pointed down to where the other small group was clearly being pushed back. Our counterparts had made it out of the forest and away from most of the reanimated animal bodies. Unfortunately, they had apparently run almost headlong into at least a hundred of the human minions. Even given their powers, they had to retreat against the sheer weight of numbers.

Unlike most zombie movies I had seen, these minions didn't really seem to move slowly. They were just as mobile as normal people, unfortunately. The other Wards were doing a decent job of backing away from them while staying together, but the side-street they were in was going to run out really soon, and there wasn't much room for them to maneuver.

"How do we get 'em out without getting bogged down ourselves?" Chris asked from where he was using his flightpack to hover just beside the makeshift platform.

Our newest team leader hesitated for a second. I could tell that her first instinct was to charge straight down there and start hitting things. Instead, she hovered and watched for a second to take in the situation before speaking again. "Okay. Aid, use your drone things as distractions to grab as many of the zombies' attention as you can to create at least a little bit of space for Vista to work with. Vista, as soon as he's got as much of their attention as possible, you spread out the distance between the largest group and where the other Wards are so they can't reach them before we pull this off. Kid Win and I will hit the ones that aren't caught by that and are still close to the other Wards. Reach, move your platform close enough for Tether to yank the others up to it. Vista, as soon as they're up on the platform, condense the space from there to the roof of that hardware store over that way. We'll regroup there and make sure everyone's all right."

Once she finished talking, Victoria glanced quickly, yet still somewhat subtlety toward me, and I gave her a slight nod of approval for taking the time to think that out. "Will do, Captain." Adding a thumbs up, I looked to Reach and Vista to make sure they were good to go.

"Works for me." Cassie cracked her neck to either side, making the platform drift sideways to get into position. "Ready when you are, Princess."

Victoria scowled slightly at the name, but smoothed her expression and took a breath. "Aid, get ready to launch your drones. The second they hit the main group, we'll go."

Even though his expression was hidden behind the samurai-like helmet he wore, I could hear the nervousness in Theo's voice as he gave a short nod before bringing up his shield. "La-" His voice cracked slightly. "Launching." His fingers pressed a series of buttons on touch screen that was hidden on the inside of the shield, tapping out instructions quickly. As he did, all of the octagon imprints in his armor lit up at once, the small drones popping off together into a swarm that proceeded to fly straight down to start harassing the zombies.

The second the main group slowed their advance to swat back at the flying metal pests, Victoria inverted herself in the air and began to dive that way. "Go!"

We needed no further encouragement. Reach sent the platform diving down and forward, barely keeping it level enough that we didn't go flying off as we all crouched there, bracing ourselves. I had already attached lines between us and the platform to keep us steady and safe, and the subsequent breaker powers that were supposed to stop myself or others from suffering whiplash also helped to mitigate what should have been debilitating nausea from the sudden drop.

Beside me, as we fell, Vista was pointing at the small area of space that had formed from the bulk of the zombies slowing their approach to deal with Theo's drones. Somehow, the younger girl was managing to maintain her focus on her powers, even as the platform we were riding on dove in what seemed like a collision course with the ground. Most people would have been _slightly_ distracted by that. Vista, on the other hand, just adjusted her stance slightly for better balance with the help of my tether-lines, and maintained her focus. She was balancing and focusing her power onto a single, specific spot even as we fell, stretching the space out along the line of undead without losing focus. It was the parahuman equivalent of rubbing her stomach and patting her head at the same time. While falling through the air at thirty miles an hour, essentially standing on top of a glorified chunk of rubble.

And it didn't even seem to be that difficult for her.

Reach stopped the platform fifteen feet above the Wards' heads and a little behind them. "Tether's up!"

I leaned forward to look down at the group just as a pair of laser cannon blasts shot down from Kid Win's combination flight/weapons pack. The lasers tore through what looked like a heavy-set fisherman that had been reaching for a girl whose back had been to him. It was the girl in the purple-and-white costume with the crossbow that I recognized from the Leviathan fight.

I focused on her first, attaching a line between the back of her costume and my own outstretched gauntlet. She was yanked up, clearly startled. That huge crossbow of hers started to jerk toward me, just as I caught her arm and hauled her onto our platform. "It's okay! You're good, we're getting you all out of here."

"The others, get the others." She pleaded, her hand gripping my arm. "Please, get them all."

"Already on it." I assured her, leaning over to keep attaching lines down to the remaining four people. I grabbed them all by their costumes, except the boy with the metal skin. Him my lines could actually connect directly to. As soon as they were all up, I leaned back. "Vista, we're good."

She nodded and turned her focus to the hardware store that Glory Girl had pointed out. The space toward it shrank almost instantly, and Reach sent the platform flying through it before coming down onto the roof to let everyone off.

As soon as they were off the platform, the girl with the crossbow—Flechette, I remembered belatedly, turned to the smallest member of their group, a girl in a black and pink costume, who looked like she was even younger than Vista. "Sparrow," she started to say.

The young girl just shook her head and walked away a few feet before sitting down cross-legged, seeming to stare at nothing but the edge of the roof.

I winced a little, thinking of what a little girl that age might have seen that could affect her that much. "Is she..."

"Okay?" Flechette finished before shaking her head. "No. None of us are. That... that thing... it brought our teammate back. It made him..." She turned away without finishing the sentence, moving to sit next to Sparrow before whispering what sounded like reassurance and encouragement to her.

"Poor kid." Gallant spoke from beside me, his voice pained. He looked to me then. "I'd like to say it's good to see you again, but..."

"Wish it was under better circumstances." I agreed, before looking back to where the youngest Ward was. "What happened out there?"

Dean hesitated, moving to stand on the edge of the roof away from the pair before beckoning me. Then he spoke quietly. "Chronicler's... body, when it was reanimated or whatever, he... talked. He blamed her for us being out here, for him dying. He just... hurt her on a whole different level. Not physically..."

I cringed then, glancing back at the poor little girl before asking, "What about you? How are you doing?"

His head shook. "The people around here, the fear... it's... I don't know how much longer I can keep this up. I'm going to be a liability if I don't focus." He snorted then. "Not that emotion blasts do much against these things."

Victoria reached us then, landing on the roof nearby before quickly hugging Dean tightly. "You're okay." She breathed out, obviously relieved. "You're all right."

While they were reuniting, I glanced toward the remaining two Maine Wards, the metal boy and a girl in some kind of martial artist get-up with gloves that had some kind of metal framework over the knuckles. "Are you guys all right?"

The two of them glanced to one another, before the boy stepped forward. "Weld. This is Grace. We're... surviving." Even that phrasing made him wince, while the girl openly flinched. "We need to get Sparrow out of here, and then find out where we can help."

"No."

The voice came from the other side of the roof, and I turned to find that little girl in the black and pink costume standing up, wooden walking stick clutched in one hand as she faced Weld. "I'm not a baby, and I'm not leaving."

Straightening beside her, Flechette tried, "Sparrow, listen-"

"I'm not leaving." The girl insisted stubbornly. "You try to put me somewhere and I'll just come back. People need help. I'm part of the team. You can... you can either let me help them _with_ you, or I'll help them by myself."

Vista silently stepped over to where the other young girl was, looked at her for a moment, then folded her arms and looked back at us without speaking. It was clear whose side she was on.

We were interrupted by a heavy **thump **at the other side of the roof that made everyone jump. Jerking that way with wide eyes, I saw a massive beast haul itself up and over the side of the building. Only belatedly, after seeing the passengers, did I realize what it was. "Wait!" I called to Flechette, who had been lifting her crossbow. "They're on our side. I think."

"You think?" Tattletale slipped down off of the giant mutated dog and gazed at us, while Hellhound stayed on the back of her animal. "Aww, and here I thought after we shared lunch, we were all friends."

" 'Shared lunch?' " Victoria echoed, frowning a little at me.

I shook my head, muttering, "Talk about it later." Then I looked back to Tattletale. "How'd you get here?"

"We have our ways," the blonde replied dismissively. "Our travel capabilities aren't important. The point is, we heard the argument you were just having and thought we'd let you know there's no place for the kid to go anyway. They're not letting anyone leave"

"What?" Victoria demanded, head shaking. "What the hell do you mean, they're not letting anyone leave? They're already teleporting people out."

"They were," Tattletale amended. "Until they found out what's going on. Or rather, until we told them what's going on, because the odds of them figuring it out without-"

"Oh would you just spit it out?" Reach and Glory girl both shot back at nearly the same time. It was probably the very first time both girls were in complete agreement, and they both looked equally surprised by that fact.

Holding up both hands to placate them, Tattletale nodded. "Fine. You know that smell that's all over the place?"

"The tar and oranges smell?" I asked, with a glance toward Theo. "What about it?"

"Think of the stuff giving off that smell as something like radiation." The Undersider explained. "Turns out, that evil son of a bitch out there gives it off everywhere he goes. It spreads out, infesting the whole area. If someone dies within the area it's infested, boom, instant-zombie."

Grace jolted a little. "Wait, do we know how long this stuff last once it infests?"

For once, the blonde Undersider wasn't smiling. Her face was grim. "The bad part is that this stuff takes time to fade out of any place that big Grim Reaper fuck's been floating through. A long time, as far as I can work out."

"How long?" I asked hesitantly, afraid of the answer.

"My best guess? Three months." Tattletale answered with a sigh. "Once that stuff infests you, it takes three months for it to wear off. And that's once you leave the area of direct effect, the area _**that **_guy's been floating around in." She jerked a finger toward the distant figure. "That's my best educated guess. Once you leave this area, it takes three months to clear out of your system once you're out of the affected area."

"What about the area itself?" Flechette asked, sounding just as hesitant as I had been. "How long does it take the area that... thing's been in to be safe again?"

There was no answer at first. For once, Tattletale looked like she didn't _**want**_ to know the answer to a question.

"Tattletale," I pressed. "How long does it take for the area to be safe again?"

She sighed, eyes closing behind her mask. "Never." Taking in a breath and then letting it out, she opened her eyes and looked right at me. "As far as I can tell, what my power's telling me is that it _**doesn't**_ ever wear off."

"This place, this town and everywhere around it, if anyone dies here, they'll turn into another zombie. Permanently."

**17.02**

"_Faultline incapacitated, BA3. Truesight deceased, BA3. Diamond Eagle incapacitated, BA3." _

The resulting long silence that followed Tattletale's words had finally been interrupted, not by any of us, but by our armbands. I flinched, staring off into the distance where the BA sector was. It was too far away for my warning lines to have picked anything up, but I still felt guilty.

This was a very different Endbringer fight than Leviathan had been. The injury and fatality reports were coming much more slowly, considering that Anubis himself wasn't really fighting, and it took a lot for even a crazed mob of human zombies to overwhelm one of the Protectorate capes.

Still, they were an inexorable tide, a gradual force rather than the rapid strikes that Leviathan made. And the longer this fight went on, the more capes would fall, which would only strengthen the other side. Even now, three capes, including Faultline, had been incapacitated or killed in the span of several seconds. Which meant that Truesight, whoever that was, was an enemy now. Would one of their teammates, one of their _friends,_ have to put them down?

It was Victoria who finally shook herself almost violently and looked back at Tattletale while announcing, "No. No way. You're wrong. This place can't be like this forever."

"Wish I was." The other girl shrugged. "Believe me, I usually love being right. It's kind of my thing. But on this, I would kill to be wrong, just this once."

"You've been wrong before." I pointed out. "Sundancer and Genesis have both seen you be wrong and miss things. Your power isn't perfect."

"Details." Tattletale agreed. "I've missed details. Sure, I might be off by a month longer or shorter for the detox time or something. Maybe there's something like that. But I'm telling you, there's a ninety... six percent certainty that the infection zone that son of a bitch makes is permanent. You want me to be wrong? So do I. But don't just dismiss it because you don't like it. I don't fucking like it either."

It was Weld who finally spoke up after the rest of us just stared back and forth at each other helplessly. "What if they kill the Endbringer? Would that fix the contamination?"

Reach snorted, shaking her head while her voice radiated sarcasm. "Wait, we're supposed to try to **kill** the damn things? Wow, it seems so obvious now. We've been doing this all wrong for _**years**_."

The metal boy gave her a long look before pressing on. "**Hypothetically**, if the Endbringer dies..."

Tattletale shrugged helplessly. "Hypothetically? Maybe. If it's even possible to kill one of these things."

"Kill it?" Kid Win pointed toward the dark shape off in the distance. "They can't even hurt the damn thing. It just absorbs energy, no one with a melee attack can get close, and ballistic weaponry doesn't seem to do much either. It just floats there ignoring them! At least the others fight back. You can tell you're hitting them when you do. This one... it might as well not even **be there** for all the good shooting it does."

"So what do we do?" Aid asked, while his drones hovered all around him waiting for orders.

Vista was the one who answered. "What we were told to do." When everyone looked at her, she pointed off the roof. "There's still people that need help, remember? Maybe this town's a lost cause and maybe it isn't, but the _people _aren't. As long as they get out of here and go through quarantine for a few months, they'll be... not fine, but they'll live. So stop moping around because the monsters don't play fair and start saving people like they told us to."

As if to punctuate her words, the armbands announced, "_Ursa Aurora deceased, AE2. Revel incapacitated, AE2." _

God, this was _worse_ than the Leviathan fight. The zombies spread everywhere. They weren't as individually powerful as one Leviathan, but their numbers meant they could be anywhere in the city all at once. I wanted to be out there. I wanted to_**help**_, but where could I do the most good? The threats were everywhere at once, and I couldn't be. I wanted to scream, but forced it down and looked to Victoria, swallowing hard. "Vista's right. We... we need to go. We need to help, any way we can."

Glory Girl visibly shook herself before nodding, her expression becoming determined. "Right. I think we should split up to cover more ground. But not alone. Teams of..." She consider briefly. "Three. Teams of three." Turning to Weld. she asked, "That is, if you guys are still up to helping."

"We're not running away from this now." Weld answered after giving his teammates a brief, inquiring look. "That thing, it..." He hesitated, clearly taking a moment to control himself before finishing simply with, "We're staying. So if you're okay with working together, that's five of us and six of you."

Tattletale paced back to the mutated dog, taking Hellhound's help getting back up on it. "Have fun with your team-up. We'll be rescuing people too, but we don't play so well with others." She gave a little salute before adding, in a slightly more sobered tone, "Sorry for the bad news."

Hellhound gave a sharp whistle, and the massive animal whirled around before leaping off the roof. Somehow, both girls managed to hold on and not scream while they were plummeting out of sight.

Shaking her head, Victoria started again. "Fine, eleven of us. I think we should mix teams, because you guys have been fighting for awhile now, and..."

"And you're mostly fresh." Weld nodded. "And... other reasons, I get it. We all get it." He paused as though considering for a moment. "Okay. Grace and me with one of yours, Sparrow and Flechette with another of yours, and Gallant with two of yours."

Dean, who had silent most of this time, finally spoke up. "Emotion blasts don't do much against zombies, but I'll do what I can."

Glory Girl looked back to us before pointing. "Kid Win, you go with Weld and Grace. They need the mobility and ranged attack. Tether, you go with Sparrow and Flechette." She faced me at the last bit, giving me a look that I nodded my understanding to. I was going with the kid to keep her safe. My power would warn me if she was in direct danger.

Victoria continued. "Reach, Aid, and Vista stay together, and I'll go with Gallant. We've worked together plenty of times. We know how we think, and I can move faster if I can just carry one person and fly."

"I... I know it's not a solution to the real problem." Glory Girl gave a helpless shrug, sighing. "I don't **have** an answer to that. I don't even know if Tattletale is right or not. But Vista _**is**_ right, either way, we need to save everyone we can. Maybe the others can find a way to kill that god damn Endbringer and maybe they can't, but the more of the zombies that we clear out and keep away from them, the more they can focus on trying."

Flechette and I hit the ground together, landing in between the dozen or so civilians who had been cornered in a dead end alley behind a church, and the pack of rotting, yet mobile, corpses that were penning them in.

"Cut, cut, cut! No, see, you guys have this **whole** zombie thing all wrong." I lamented like an annoyed director. "You're supposed to drool and groan and shuffle. You're just... walking. Are you even trying?"

In answer, three of the undead minions rushed at me. I set my lines on them, but let them keep coming. Once they were close enough, I called, "Do it, Sparrow!"

The younger girl, floating above us with her flight bracelets, upended the can of fuel she had been carrying, dumping the liquid all over the trio, who staggered to a halt and blinked up in confusion as the liquid drenched them.

In the next second, Flechette hoisted her enormous crossbow, revealing that the end of the long bolt had been wrapped with a rag that was already burning. She launched the flaming bolt at the group of fuel-soaked minions, who were instantly engulfed with flames.

As soon as they were on fire, I used my lines to throw them backwards, hurling the three blazing monsters into the main group. The flying, burning bodies tore into the mob, spreading the flames quickly.

Landing in front of us, Sparrow held her wooden stick out and summoned a forcefield that filled the width of the alleyway, blocking the flaming zombies from approaching.

Meanwhile, I tethered my way to the nearby roof and made sure none of the burning creatures escaped the other way. In most cases, having a bunch of crazed undead monsters and setting them on fire would be making things worse. But here, between my lines on one side and Sparrow's forcefield on the other, we were able to contain the damage.

But it didn't save us from the smell. That horrible, soul-withering scent of burning human flesh made my stomach turn. It was like acrid charcoal that brought bile to my mouth and literal tears to my eyes just at the scent, let alone the... implications.

Finally, it was over. Sparrow let the forcefield down, turning away from the remains before falling to her knees. The little girl barely managed to lift her mask before she was throwing up.

Flechette was at her side a second later, cradling the girl before looking back at me. I couldn't see much of her expression, but her entire body shook with obvious anger. She was furious at this whole situation.

So was I. That poor kid was so small, so tiny and fragile. Fuck me. Fuck all of us. But most, fuck the Endbringers. This was wrong. All of it. What were we doing? How could we just expect this little girl to handle all this? She couldn't have been older than eleven.

"Is... is she going to be all right?"

The hesitant voice made me turn that way, startled. I'd forgotten about the civilians somehow. One of them, an older woman in a flowery dress, had stepped forward. Her expression was a mix of fear and concern. "She shouldn't be here. She's just... a child."

One of the men, a man with a priest's collar, nodded. "Thank you all for helping us. Please, let the child stay with us. We know the way to the evacuation point."

There was a general murmur of agreement, the group determined not to let the little girl who had helped save them go back out into the fight.

Flechette didn't even hesitate before she nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, you can-"

"No." Stubbornly, Sparrow pushed her way up and out of her teammate's arms. She stood there, trembling briefly before wiping an arm across her mouth. Then she tugged her mask back down with both hands. "I t-told you, I'm... not... leaving." She was clearly trying to sound firm, but her voice shook with each word, and she was shivering with fear and emotion.

"Child, it's all right." The priest tried to assure her. "You've saved us, you've done your part. Come, let us _**all**_ get to safety."

For a moment, Sparrow said nothing. She just looked at the man silently. Then her bracelets began to glow once more, and she lifted off of the ground. Her voice was soft, far more sad than it was determined. "Are we... going together, or do I have to... save people by myself?"

A pair of dark lines chose that moment to pop up, and I grimaced at the timing. "This way." I looked to Flechette before pointing. "More to do."

The other girl dropped her head briefly before swallowing audibly. "Let's go." I could hear her obvious heartbreaking pain at the innocent little girl's continued refusal to leave despite what all of this was obviously doing to her.

Attaching tethers to both of us, I launched us upward and over the roof of the church, Sparrow resolutely flying behind us as I followed the dark warning line across to the next street.

As soon as we came down on the street, I could see what my lines had been warning me about, and my eyes widened. There was a cape about a hundred feet further up the road, a _dead_ one. He was obviously a brute of some kind, standing in front of a van with a crumpled front end. The corpse of the former hero laughed out loud before punching the side of the van, crumpling it in partway and drawing a pair of screams from within, where my lines led.  
>"Come out, come out wherever you are!" The dead cape called. "Raaaaachel, don't you want to get your picture taken with your favorite hero? I thought we were friends!"<p>

"Oh no." Flechette cringed next to me. "Not Suplex. He was so... sweet..."

Whatever he had been like before, the deceased cape was monstrous now. He raised his fist again, preparing to smash the side of the van in. Before he could, I attached a line between the ruined front end, and another crashed vehicle next to us. The van was yanked forward, skidding on broken tires along the road with a squeal of tortured metal, while the undead hero's fist whiffed through the air.

He whirled, eyes landing on us just as Sparrow landed a few feet away from him. Her voice was distraught. "Suplex! You—you can't do this! Please, Suplex, you're... you're a good guy." She pleaded desperately. "You don't like to hurt anybody! You wouldn't even kill that spider that scared me, remember?"

The man snarled and grabbed for the girl, but I quickly used a line to yank her backwards and out of his grasp. Meanwhile, Flechette brought her crossbow up and launched a bolt that practically split the man's head in half, the force staggering him backward even if it didn't put him down.

Before he could move again, Sparrow threw the little glowing ball that she had taken out of her belt pouch. As it hit the man, ice spread out over his body, locking him in place.

For a second, we all just stood there. Flechette stepped toward her younger teammate. "Sparrow, we..."

"Do it." The younger girl's voice shook, head lowered as she stared at the ground. "Just do it."

Swallowing audibly, Flechette used another of her bolts, shooting it into the center of the frozen corpse. It shattered, and Sparrow folded her arms over her stomach, gaze still lowered to the ground while her shoulders shook. I could hear her broken, bitter little cries as she fought a losing battle to contain her emotions.

Flechette moved to her, but before she could get there, the girl suddenly flew upward and whirled in the air to face the Endbringer, whose form still floated on the other side of the city.

"_**I HATE YOU!" **_The girl screamed at the top of her lungs, her voice echoing up and down the street and off of the buildings. "_**Why are you here?! What do you want?! You... you..." **_

"Sparrow." I interrupted. "Can you... come here?"

She landed beside me, shaking her head sadly while repeating in a voice choked by emotion, "Wh-what does he want? Why are they are? Why can't they just... just stop?"

"I don't know." I admitted. "But look." I pointed to the broken van, where the two civilians were fearfully emerging. "They're alive because of you. Because you were here. This, all of it? It sucks. It's horrible and... and if you focus on the bad, you'll lose. You might win the fight, but you'll lose everything else that matters."

"S... so what do you focus on?" She asked me, her voice trembling.

"That." Flechette answered for me, pointing at the two surviving people. "You focus on the good you can do, Sparrow. This... it's not a game. It's not... fun. It's work. I... god, I wanted to spare you from that as long as possible, but I can't. This is real, Sparrow. This is what happens. We win some and we lose some, and when we lose, it's _**real.**_ The people we lose, the... friends... it... it's horrible."

"I miss Ben." The little girl said in a soft, sad little voice.

Flechette gave a little shudder next to me. "So do I." She admitted, reaching out to take the younger girl's hand. "We're all going to miss him, and... and everyone else that we lose. That's why I want you to go where it's safe, because if you get hurt..."

"But you won't leave, will you?" Sparrow pressed, looking up at her teammate.

"... no." The crossbow-wielding hero shook her head. "I can't, Sparrow. There's still people to help."

"And I'd be just as sad if you got hurt. Or... or died." The younger girl pointed out. "So... so I'm staying. I'm staying." She took in a breath, then focused. "So... so stop trying to convince me to leave. Because I'm not leaving. I'm helping. I know it's not a game... and... I hate it. I hate this! But I can't... leave. If I l-leave, everyone else that... that gets hurt, I'll always... a-always think... if I could've helped them. Please stop trying to m-make me leave. I can't. I just... c-can't."

Flechette stared at the younger girl, then nodded. "Okay. We... we'll do what we can. We'll do some good, all right?"

"Okay." Sparrow's young voice was so soft I could barely hear her. She still sounded sad, yet there was an undercurrent of determination that was stronger than before. "I'm ready. Let's... go save people."

"Yeah." I attached a pair of lines for myself and Flechette, murmuring my own agreement. "Let's go save people."

Because it was what we _**could**_ do that mattered. The people we _**could**_ save, the ones who lived because we got there in time, they were the reason we were there. They were the reason we didn't curl into a ball and die at the thought of how pointless this entire battle could be.

_"Vindicator deceased, BA3. Spitfire deceased, BA3." _

We saved everyone we could, because the moment we gave up, the moment we surrendered to the creeping despair that was the true enemy in this battle, we, and everything else, would be lost.

**17.03**

A dog, sporting a nasty and obviously fatal hole in his side, leapt through the air toward a pair of sobbing children that couldn't have been older than nine or ten. Halfway there, a foot-long bolt struck the undead animal right through its rotting hole, sending the howling animal sideways and into the side of a building.

I landed next to the two kids and wrapped my arms around both of them. "Hey guys, let's go for a little ride. Wrap your arms around me, okay?" Once the sniffing, crying children had done so, I launched us upward and away from the half dozen of the human variety of zombies that were still coming for them.

Landing on the roof of a nearby building, I tried to release them, but neither kid wanted to let go. They clung to my neck and arms, pleading for me not to leave them alone.  
>I felt a simultaneous flash of pity for the children, and anger for whoever had left them out there in the street. Then I realized what might have happened to <em>make<em> them be alone, and my heart dropped even further.

"Guys, listen. Listen, I'll be right back. I promise." I assured them. "I need you two to sit right here. Just sit down here, while I help my friends. We will come right back for you as soon as we can, and then we'll go for a little trip to get away from the bad guys. I'm not leaving you alone, I promise. Just going right down there."

One of the boys, the younger one, gave a little sniff. "You... you'll kill them? Even Mr. Garad?"

I swallowed, closing my eyes briefly behind the mask. Whatever those zombies were now, they had been these kids' neighbors, their friends, teachers, and relatives. "I'll take care of it. We'll take care of it. Just stay here and try to be quiet, okay? You'll be safe. My power warns me when people are in trouble, so I'll know."

"You'll be right back?" The slightly older boy, who still couldn't have been older than ten, pressed. "Right back, you promise?"

"I promise." I nodded before straightening out of their slacking grips. "I will be right back for you."

Jumping from the roof, I landed beside Sparrow, who had been backing away from two of the approaching zombies. Putting lines against their chests, I sent the pair flying backwards into the wall of a nearby building as hard as I could.

It didn't matter. The second the lines released them, the zombies were moving again. My powers, in this instant, just weren't lethal enough when the monsters didn't feel pain and weren't bothered by bruises and broken limbs. They were slowed, finally reduced to the sort of shuffling gait that most movie zombies were known for simply because so much of their remaining bones had been broken by the impact, but they were still coming.

Almost as if she had read my mind, Flechette called out from a few feet away, "I need a better weapon!" Another of her bolts launched out, passing right through one of the surrounding zombies knees. He staggered, but kept moving forward, hauling himself forward alongside his still-standing companions, one stumbling step at a time.

"Damn it." The other girl lamented. "I used to use a rapier, but I switched to this. Really missing that sword right about now."

She was right. Her crossbow was an incredible weapon in most cases, but the piercing damage it was doing just wasn't cutting it. These enemies were ignoring pretty much any damage that didn't completely destroy their ability to move. Flechette needed something that could cut, not pierce.

Beside me, Sparrow suddenly lit up, floating off the ground as she called, "I got an idea! Hold 'em off, I'll be right back!"

"Sparrow, no!" Flechette protested. "Don't go off by yourself!"

The little girl was already flying off backwards toward the next street over. "I'll be okay! I promise! I have an idea that'll help! It's not very far, I'll be right back!"

Before either of us could argue with her, the girl was gone, and I had to focus on the incoming zombies. Grimacing, I used a line attached from a nearby SUV to a spot past the undead minions, then sent it flying into the group to knock them sprawling.

"We can't just run off and leave these things wandering around." I called to Flechette, who was bracing her big crossbow to shoot the leg out from under one of the few zombies that had escaped the truck. "They'll find someone we missed."

"I know!" She called back, head shaking. "But I'm open to ideas for destroying them."

The damn things were still crawling or staggering forward, over and around the fallen vehicle that had briefly scattered them. Inexorably, like water eroding soil, they pushed forward.

"Okay." I cracked my neck to the side. "You guys asked for it." Turning, I looked down the street at an overturned school bus. Stretching my hand out that way, I attached a line between it and my gauntlet, then gave a yank on the line that brought the bus skidding down the pavement with an earsplitting screech, throwing up sparks as it came.

The zombies all stopped to stare briefly at the bus while it came screeching into the space between us.

"I don't think that's gonna block them for very long," Flechette pointed out.

"Not using it to block them." I focused on the bus, bracing two lines underneath the thing, between the metal and the ground. Then I threw the bright yellow vehicle high up into the air. It sailed up thirty feet or so, while the zombies all tilted their heads that way to see what it was doing.

With a grim smile, I brought the bus _**slamming**_ back down into the ground on top of the largest cluster of zombies. It hit with the force of, well, a bus. The undead it hit were literally flattened beneath it, like flies under a giant metal swatter. Another line attached between the bus and a wall nearby sent it flipping sideways before I reoriented it to slam yet again into another pocket of the monstrous cadavers.

The bus itself had crumpled beneath the force of the blows I was putting it through, but most of the zombies in that group were completely broken. They could ignore pain and kept going through all but the worst damage, but being flattened by a twelve ton hunk of metal was _**not **_one of those things that they could just shrug off.

"Wow." Flechette had moved next to me through that, her crossbow raised just in case any of the remaining zombies were still ambulatory enough to press onward.

"I know." A tiny smirk came then. In spite of everything that was happening, I couldn't resist adding, "That's one bus they didn't miss."

A strangled little snorting noise of disbelief escaped the other girl, as she turned to stare at me. "Everything that's happening, and you just... made a joke?"

I grimaced a little. "It's... sort of what I do. Sorry. Doesn't mean I'm not taking it seriously. I... It just sort of... happens. It's how I process and cope with things. I swear I'm not... brushing off what's happening. I just..."

"It's okay." She sounded uncertain, but repeated herself with a nod. "It's all right. I just... I mean, it's not all right. This whole situation isn't all right at all. It's just... I don't know. Ben died and... and we haven't even been able to... to stop and think about it. I didn't know him that well for very long, but he was still... I just... We can't stop and think. We can't even breathe. And I can't let Sparrow see how much I just want to lay down and just... just make it stop for just a few minutes so I can... so I can cry, because _**she's**_ barely holding on, and if **I **lose it..."

Cringing slightly at the sound of the pain in the other girl's voice, I glanced around briefly to make sure we were still clear for the moment. Once I was sure we had time, I pulled her into a brief hug. "I'm sorry about your friend." I made a point of calling him a _friend_, not just a teammate.

She barely knew me, but Flechette clung to me immediately, the crossbow dropping from her grip as she tightened her grip tightly. "I'm sorry." She shook her head slowly. "I just... I just need a... a second..."

"It's all right," I assured her. "Just take a minute and..." I stopped talking, biting my lip at the sound of the other girl's soft, yet audible cries as her shoulders shook slightly.

For a few seconds, right there in the middle of the newest Endbringer's zombie apocalypse, I held onto this girl I barely knew, and gave her what pathetically little time that I could to mourn her lost teammate. She wasn't really hugging **me**, I knew. She just needed someone, anyone, to stand there and let her _stop_ standing for just a moment.

Far too short of a time later, Flechette released me and took a step back to collect herself. No sooner had she done so, than the small figure of Sparrow dropped from the sky. The little girl was holding what looked briefly like a coil of rope in both hands, which she held out toward her teammate.

"I didn't know where a sword was, but... I saw Mr. Earls take this away from a couple seventh graders two days ago. It was still in his office."

Flechette took the thing and let it uncoil, and I realized that it wasn't rope. It was a long, black whip.

"Can you use that?" I asked hesitantly.

She shrugged at me. "Gonna need practice, but it's gotta be better than the crossbow for this situation." Her free hand came down to squeeze the top of Sparrow's head. "Thanks, kid. Let's give it a shot."

A few minutes later, I landed in the back lot of the grocery store, releasing both young boys and pointing them toward the nearest adult that looked like they were still organizing people.

As soon as they ran off, I turned back toward the other two and started to ask, "Where do you want to look no-"

In mid-sentence, a trio of black lines abruptly shot up and all-but yanked me off balance in their urgency. I spun that way, seeing the lines lead off toward another street. "Going up!" I spared only that much time to warn the other two before using new lines to throw myself and Flechette through the air.

The urgency of the dark lines kept yanking me onward, until I saw what they were directing me to: a couple of clearly young parents, shielding their tiny baby as one of the cape zombies toyed with them by shooting fire at their feet.

Spitfire. I realized belatedly. It was Spitfire, from Faultline's group. She had died, and now she was... she was pretty much torturing those parents, telling them how she was going to tear their baby from their hands and burn her alive while they watched.

"There is _**one**_ good thing about this whole shitty situation." I remarked out loud while landing a dozen yards behind the undead cape. "The cape zombies are too busy fucking monologuing to get anything done." With that, I attached a line to the back of the dead Spitfire's costume, and yanked her backwards, away from the family.

Even as she hit the wall I'd attached her to, the zombie-cape twisted toward me, preparing to spray her flame. Before she could, Flechette lashed out with the whip that Sparrow had brought her. She swung it out in a long, sideways arc, her power making it literally cut straight through Spitfire's neck as easily as tearing a simple piece of paper in two.

While the head went rolling, the body tried to rush forward. Before it could move more than a couple steps, Flechette retracted the whip, then lashed out again. This time, the whip cut straight down through the headless corpse, slicing it in half right down the middle. Both halves fell to either side, and a couple more quick lashes from the empowered whip cut the limbs away from each other, just to be sure.

"This..." Flechette announced slowly, "I could get used to."

In the next second, I saw a light red line jump to her. I turned to push her out of the way, but before I could, something practically fell out of the sky. I had a flash of a man with a metal costume before he knocked both of us sprawling. I hit the ground hard, groaning on my stomach as Flechette lay next to me. Perched on top of both of us, the man laughed out loud while holding us each down with a grip that was too strong to break. "Aww, did I take the little girls by surprise? Were you too busy chatting about your make-up and your dollies to pay attention? Lemme show you what happens to little girls that don't pay attention."

I couldn't see well enough to attach lines to the guy with any degree of confidence, and he had Flechette and me in an iron grip. Even worse, my arm was bent under me in such a way that Jalopy couldn't free himself to help out even if he tried.

Even so, the man didn't have a chance to show us much of anything, before I heard Sparrow's voice as she landed next to him. "Let them go." Her voice was soft, but determined.

"Oh don't feel left out, little kid." The undead cape mocked. "I'll get to you in a minute, just as soon as I finish breaking apart these two weak little-"

"Last chance." Sparrow warned, her voice going quieter. "Please don't make me do this."

"Look, you little brat," The zombie was obviously annoyed by the interruption. He was pushing us even harder against the ground, to the point that we couldn't breathe, let alone talk. "Just back off, all right? No one here, not one single god damn person, takes you seriously. You're a joke. You've got a bunch of powers you don't even know how to use, and aaaany day now the Protectorate's gonna realize that they're wasting their time trying to make you into something you're not. You're an incompetent, pathetic little girl that rolled a few lucky dice. If it wasn't for your powers, not one single person would give a_**shit**_ about you. And even with **those** you're too much of a fucking useless, incompetent brat to-"

I heard a screech of metal and a sharp cry that cut off the man's words, followed by silence. The grip was gone.

Rolling over and sitting up, Flechette and I both stared at what looked like it had been the man who was holding us down. His armor was crumpled in almost flat on every side, and twisted around in multiple unnatural ways.

Sparrow sat nearby, rocking back and forth. "I wanted him to stop," she said quietly, her voice sad and lost. "I tried to make him stop. I didn't want to... to do it. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I didn't wanna be the one that... I... I'm not... a good hero. I'm not a good hero. I didn't wanna kill him. I... I know he was already dead, but I didn't... I didn't wanna..."

"Shhh... shhh..." Flechette quickly shifted over to pull the girl against her. "You _**are**_ a good hero, Sparrow. Don't listen to these evil assholes. They're just trying hurt you. You just saved our lives. You... did what you had to do. It's okay. It's all right."

I waited a moment, giving them a chance to pull themselves together, before asking, "Err, just curious, what _did_ you do anyway?" I nodded toward the crumpled heap of metal.

The younger girl waved both hands at me. "Metal-shaping gloves. I... I didn't want to do it, I really didn't. But he was hurting you, and..."

"And you did what you had to do. You did the right thing." I assured her.

We picked ourselves up, Flechette retrieving her new weapon, just as a familiar chunk of flying pavement came floating down out of the sky, hovering just above the nearby roof level.

Reach and Vista dropped to the ground a moment later, using the latter's ability to shrink the distance. They were followed shortly by Aid.

"Are you guys okay?" Vista asked. "We saw you get hit by Vindicator, but we got occupied and... oh." She was staring at the remains of the man's metal armor, realizing what was inside.

"Yeah." I nodded. "We're okay. Thanks to Sparrow."

Reach gestured toward the weapon in the older Maine Ward's hand. "So you switched from Flechette to Whiplass, huh? I like it."

"What about you guys?" I asked quickly while Flechette stammered. "Do you have any idea what's going on?"

"Actually..." Aid spoke up then, glancing over his shoulder at the still-hovering chunk of pavement. He had seemed nervous and jumpy the whole time, even for him. "That's why we... came to find you."

"Me?" I blinked. "Why me? Glory Girl's the leader."

"Yeah, but this is..." Vista bit her lip, clearly hesitating before looking helplessly toward Reach.

"This is your thing, not her thing." Cassie said easily, before calling out. "Yo, come on!" With a wave of her hand, she made the hovering platform lower to the ground.

I looked that way, confused, in time to see four figures step off the chunk of pavement and approach.

Two were Pandora, while the remaining pair were Emma and...

"Wait, is that... " Flechette's gasp was audible, and she put herself in front of Sparrow, raising her whip. "Bonesaw. Get... the_**FUCK**_ back!"

It _was_ Riley, I realized belatedly. I hadn't recognized her at first because she wasn't wearing a blood-covered dress. Instead, she wore brown jeans with a few stains that I didn't want to question, and a black hoody with a red peace sign on the front. She carried a backpack over one shoulder.

"Wait! Just wait!" Emma quickly moved in front of both the Pandoras and Riley, before anything else could happen. "Just listen! We... we came to help. She's... she's n-not going to hurt a-anybody!"

I stared briefly at Vista. "You brought them here?"

She shrugged. "They showed up on the edge of town, and said they were coming to find you. What else was I gonna do, try to fight my way past two Pandoras to attack Bonesaw? You _**do**_ know who she is, right?"

"It's a long story." I told her with a sigh, closing my eyes briefly before looking that way. "What... what are you guys doing here? Where's Dinah?"

Emma hesitated. "She... s-said we could... do this p-part."

Flechette was staring at me like I had grown three new heads. "Why is _**Bonesaw**_ standing here? Don't we have enough problems?"

"Okay... first... stop calling her that." I said quickly to the other girl, realizing the constant reminders of her previous life wasn't helping matters. Then I focused on the former (I hoped) villain herself. "Riley, why _**are**_ you here? This... this is not a good time."

Riley, who had been watching everyone else's reactions to her, stepped forward. Her voice was much more subdued than usual. The only time I had heard her talk this way was when she had calmly, quietly informed me that she knew I was afraid of her, but she wouldn't hurt me.

"I want to help. I... can help."

"Bullshit!" Flechette cursed. "Where you are, the rest of the Nine are. What **game** are you freaks trying to play now? Don't you think this town's suffered enough? Even you evil little-"

"Flechette!" I shot her a look. "Stop it. Riley hasn't been with... them for months now. She's... different. Just... just wait." I looked back to the other girl then, grinding my teeth a little. "Riley, how do you think you can help now?"

"I know I messed up before." She said quickly. "When I was trying to be like you and help Bakuda. I know I made things worse. But this time I _**know**_ I can help."

"How?" I pressed, as firmly as I dared.

Her answer was to reach into the backpack, probably giving half the people there simultaneous heart attacks, before withdrawing a syringe.

"I made an inoculation against the new Endbringer's aura." She said, as easily as if she was showing off a decent science project to a class.

"You know, in case anyone that's fighting doesn't wanna turn into a zombie."

**17.04**

I must have been accustomed to the former Slaughterhouse Nine bio-tinker by that point, because I cruised right past Riley's insinuation that there were people who _would_ want to turn into a zombie, and straight to, "You made a cure? Just like that?"

Riley's eyebrow lifted. "Err, wouldja understand the technical explanation?"

"Not really."

"Then I made a cure just like that." She shrugged both small shoulders, looking actually a little more... shy than I could remember. "But not really a cure. It won't fix someone that's already a zombie. But it'll stop anyone who takes it from turning into one if they... ya know..." She drew her finger across her throat and make a croaking noise.

"Oh come on!" Flechette's head was shaking firmly. "You **cannot** believe her. She just wants to trick someone into taking it so that it infects them with some kind of horrible disease _and_ turns them into a human bomb or something so they explode disease infested blood over an entire city block."

"Jeeze," Riley muttered. "Do something **one** time and people start thinking it's like your signature move or somethin'."

"So, soooo not helping, Riley." I let out a long breath, looking to the others for help that wasn't coming. Vista looked like she was barely one very short step above Flechette's outright dismissal of the entire idea, while Reach was clearly waiting to see what I thought. Sparrow's bright glowing pink smiley face told me nothing of her actual opinion. The Pandoras were both watching me intently, and Emma's expression was also impossible to read, since she was wearing the headgear with the mirrored plate over the top half of her face.

Finally, I let out a breath. "Okay, look. We take this stuff to Panacea and see what she thinks. She can... look at it or whatever. If it works... well, we'll go from there."

"What about her?" Flechette lifted a hand to point at Riley. "She has a kill on sight order."

"Yeah, and she came here knowing that." I pointed out flatly before looking back at Riley. "That's why the Pandoras are here, isn't it? To make sure you get in and out safely."

It was the Pandora on the left that answered. "Yes, Tether-Friend. We will protect Riley-Friend from any who wish to harm her, reanimated dead or otherwise."

"We go to Panacea then." I looked to the others. "See what she can find out about this stuff, and then... then we go from there. Riley, how much of this did you bring?"

In answer, she turned to Emma, who in turn turned to look down the street. One by one, we all looked that way, as a full-sized semi-truck with attached trailer drove around the corner and parked itself nearby.

"About that much." Riley replied then, waving vaguely that way.

"E—I mean, Oversight... how were you driving that thing around without seeing it?" I asked slowly.

"Oh, umm, there's GPS and cameras on the truck, and... umm, traffic cameras, ATM cameras, security cameras, camera phones... it's not that hard to coordinate between all those things." Emma answered while gazing off in another random direction.

"Errr, Oversight, what are you looking at now?"

Her mouth fell open briefly in obvious surprise. "Umm, y-you? I mean..." It took her a second before she turned to face me directly. "Sorry, I uhh, really... was l-looking at you. Ju-just..." Her hand waved toward a nearby ATM machine. "With that instead of... these." She gestured to her own face then, visibly flushing with embarrassment. "I'm s-sorry, just... it's so... easy..."

I shook that off, trying to focus on the important thing. "We take it to Panacea and... and then go from there."

The town was small enough that it only took a few minutes for us to reach the grocery store, riding atop the chunk of pavement that Reach was controlling, which itself was hovering over the semi that Emma was controlling.

Every street surrounding the store was literally crawling with zombies. It looked like the Protectorate and most of the independent heroes had fallen back and were focusing on keeping store and surrounding lot clear, and it was taking all of them to even do that much. For every three or four zombies one cape stopped, an equal number tried to drag them down. They were being overwhelmed by sheer numbers.

The lot itself was full of refugees from the city, civilians that were huddled together in groups, looking traumatized and bleak. There were also so many people that seemed to be wandering aimlessly, calling out for their families, and far too few answering calls.

"It's really bad out there." Cassie murmured next to me. "I mean, I helped cause a lot of problems with the Empire, but this..." Her head shook. "This is... fucked up." Her attention was focused off in the distance, and I realized that she was glaring at the dark shadow of Anubis.

Below us, Emma wasn't just directing the single semi-truck. She was actually directing two other vehicles, a large van and an SUV, to drive ahead of it, plowing through the mob of zombies to clear the path for the semi itself to avoid jostling the contents of the trailer too much. A couple other vehicles brought up the rear to keep pursuers away.

Five vehicles. She was controlling five vehicles at once, performing rather complicated maneuvers involving multiple turns at different speeds and occasionally directing one or more of them toward various threats, and it looked easy.

The chunk of pavement landed behind Armsmaster and Penance. I put a hand on Riley's tense shoulder. "Take it easy. I know freaking people out is kind of your coping mechanism, but just... try not to say much. They're going to be upset. Don't hold it against them too much."

Her expression was unreadable, but she gave the faintest of nods. Then we stepped down together off of the rubble.

We'd barely taken two steps forward, while everyone else except the Pandoras chose to hang back, before Armsmaster noticed us. He turned away from the person he was talking to—Eidolon, I realized belatedly. He was talking to Eidolon. I was_**looking**_ at Eidolon.

This was ridiculous. I was in the middle of an Endbringer attack, a literal zombie apocalypse, and I was _fangirling_ over one of the Triumvirate members. I just couldn't help it. I'd met Legend and _that_ had been one of the most amazing experiences of my life. Even meeting Alexandria, such a short time after thinking that she had died, had been pretty amazing. But Eidolon was a whole other level. I _liked_ Legend more, because he was far more personable, but meeting Eidolon, even a situation like this, left me practically in awe.

I was jolted back to myself by Armsmaster's bellow. "Tether! What... is... _**she**_ doing here?" He had lifted his halberd to point at Riley.

I hesitated. "Errr... well, see... Riley... she's staying with Dinah and-"

"We're aware of that." He barked impatiently. "We've been aware of it for awhile now. You think we're that stupid? I didn't ask what she's been doing, I asked what she's doing _**here.**_"

That took me aback. "Uhh, you knew she was with Dinah and Pandora?"

"Yes, you may find this hard to believe, but we do occasionally know what's happening in our own city. Now answer the question before I decide you've been compromised. The last thing we need in this situation is something like **that**." His weapon jabbed toward the girl at my side.

Before I could answer, a new voice spoke up. "Bonesaw." Eidolon had moved to stand next to Armsmaster, both of them projecting waves of hostility. "What do you want?"

"Hiya Mister Lon." Riley waved a hand at the man who was regarded as the second most powerful cape in the world. "I heard your eye grew back after that thing in San Antonio. That's... uhh, good."

"Stop the innocent act, Bonesaw." Eidolon was unamused. "We have far more important things to focus on than you. The Endbringer truce doesn't extend to people like the Nine. So give me one reason why we shouldn't just put you down and move on having at least accomplished one good thing today."

"We would stop you." One of the Pandoras informed him, both of them glaring at the man.

Oh good, Dinah had taught Pandora enough that they knew how to glare. That was going to be helpful here.

"And you would be the clone." Eidolon shook his head, his tone dismissive. "Another situation Brockton Bay hasn't handled."

I was starting to realize why Alexandria and Eidolon tended to let Legend do the talking. He was _far _more approachable than either of them.

"_**Riley**_-" I stressed the name pointedly. "-says she has something that will prevent people from turning into zombies when they die. An inoculation against whatever Anubis is doing to animate them."

Eidolon gave me what I interpreted as a withering look. "And you believe her?"

I glanced toward Riley's carefully blank expression before giving a slight nod. "In this case, I do. She's... trying, Eidolon. I know she's done some really bad things, but-"

"No." His head shook. "You don't know. You might've seen the news, but you don't _**know**_ the kind of evil this creature is capable of until you've lived it."

"She's not a creature!" I snapped without thinking about who I was snapping at. "She did some horrible things, but she's here to help now. She's _**trying**_ to help, and you're-"

"Preventing one of the Nine from toying with people's hopes and lives." Eidolon said firmly. "She is not injecting whatever that stuff is into anyone here."

"We just need Panacea to look at the stuff she brought," I tried to explain. "Maybe see if she can inject someone so that Panacea can monitor what happens to their bodies and whether or not it's a-"

"Are you really that naïve?" Eidolon shook his head at me. "She's playing you. It's what she does. She toys with people's perception of her innocence, and then she-"

"Would you shut up and listen to me? She's not doing that now!" I was so frustrated that I interrupted _**Eidolon**_. I told_**Eidolon **_to shut up. Afterward, I was so surprised by what I had done that I forgot to say anything else. Which was a shame because my brazenness actually made him fall into silent shock as well, so it would have been a good time to try to explain further. In the background, Armsmaster's mouth was hanging open, and he was making some kind of noise that made me think that his brain had gone into test pattern mode.

Both of us were just staring at each other for a long moment before a quiet voice blurted, "Ow."

All of us turned to see the two Pandoras step out of the way, revealing Riley standing next to the person who had spoken up: Sparrow. The young Ward had the sleeve of her costume rolled up to reveal light brown skin, and Riley was withdrawing the syringe.

Both men reacted instantly. Eidolon made a pushing gesture with his hands that sent both Pandoras flying backwards and out of the way, while Armsmaster lashed out with a blow from the side of his halberd that knocked Riley to the ground before he inverted the weapon to put the blade toward her.

The weapons stopped before it could go further, bending a little toward Sparrow, who stood with her still-gloved hand outstretched. "Stop!" She cried out, head shaking. "Stop it!" Bringing her staff up with her other hand, she projected a forcefield around Riley. "Just stop fighting!"

Eidolon and both Pandoras stood frozen for a second, long enough for Flechette to reach her younger teammate. "Sparrow! What... what did you..." Her gaze obviously took in the mark on the little girl's bare arm, and the syringe that had fallen onto the ground. Once she realized what had happened, Flechette let out a strangled noise of rage and started to lunge toward Riley herself, only stopped by the still-erect forcefield.

"I told her to!" Sparrow blurted. "If... if you wanna be mad at somebody for her putting that stuff in me, then be mad at me! I don't wanna be a monster if I die. I don't wanna hurt my friends. I don't wanna hurt anybody! An'... an' if she says that it can stop it... w-well then... I think that's more important than the bad stuff she did before."

"Sparrow..." Flechette's head shook as she lamented, "you didn't have to do that yourself. Somebody else should have tested it."

"They were scared." The little girl shrugged. "I wasn't that scared. Not of getting a shot. I was scared of being a monster, and she said with this stuff I won't be. I don't mind getting a shot if it'll make me not be a monster. And... I thought if I did it, they wouldn't be scared of it anymore."

Eidolon slowly turned away from the Pandoras, staring at the young girl. "We were concerned for your health. You can't trust her. Anything she wants to give you will hurt you."

In response, Sparrow held her arm out to indicate the mark the needle had made. "It didn't hurt me."

Riley had picked herself off the ground by that point. "That's cuz it's not poison. It'll stop you from turning into a zombie. Like I already said. Eesh, some people really gotta learn to listen."

"She took it now." I spoke through gritted teeth. "So what's the harm in taking her in to see Panacea so that she can say if it looks good or not? And if it's good, Riley can work with her."

Eidolon was still staring at Sparrow as he replied. "You want us to let Bonesaw get anywhere near Panacea? Have you completely lost your mind?"

I clenched my fists tightly before releasing them. "What I _**want **_is to stop all of this from happening." I gestured around at all the fighting. "If letting _**Riley**_ near Panacea is the way to do it, then yes."

Reach, Vista, Emma, and Aid reached us by then. Theo stopped to stare at Eidolon, clearly having his own hero-worship moment that I couldn't really blame him for.

Cassie, on the other hand, kept walking past and on toward the store. "You guys coming or what?"

"Yeah." Vista waved a hand vaguely. "I'd kinda like to know if this cure thing is actually gonna work."

I looked at Armsmaster, then Eidolon, before breathing out. "We're going in to see Panacea now so she can look at Sparrow. You guys can either keep being paranoid about what _**Riley**_ might or might not be doing, or focus on saving people, like we're_supposed _to be doing."

As we walked on to the store, Emma whispered to me, "D-did you just scold Eidolon about saving p-people?"

My only response was a horrified repetition of, "Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god..."

Ruin had been keeping the store completely clear of any stray zombies, even before the rest of the capes pulled back and devoted themselves to protecting the surrounding lot. The only people in the store were injured capes that were waiting to be healed. None, I had noticed while waiting for Panacea to finish analyzing Sparrow and the medicine that Riley had brought, were near death. They didn't want to let anyone that was that close to dying near Panacea.

It had taken a few minutes for Panacea to have time to check out Sparrow. Reach, Vista, and Theo had left to go do what they could to help outside. I wanted to go, but I needed to stay there and sit next to Riley. She had so few people that believed she wasn't trying to hurt anyone this time that I couldn't just leave her like that.

Flechette had insisted on staying here as well, saying that she wouldn't be any good to anyone until she heard from Panacea that Sparrow was going to be all right.

Ruin stood at the front of the storeroom, occasionally glancing toward me questioningly. All I could do was nod reassuringly and wait.

Emma, meanwhile, was apparently zoned out into her own little world. I'd asked what she was doing, and her answer had been that she was making the machines outside fight the zombies.

I was afraid to ask how much she was somehow managing to coordinate separately and independently that way. I had the feeling the answer would scare me more than not knowing did.

"She'll be fine." Amy finally said, taking her hand off of Sparrow's exposed arm. "Whatever that stuff is, it's not hurting her. Looks like it's fixing whatever changes that Endbringer's aura was making that reanimates the body after death."

Hearing that, Flechette quickly hugged Sparrow tightly, while simultaneously ordering her never to do something like that again.

"So it's safe." I verified. "It really does fix the zombie infection."

"That's what I saaaaaaaid." Riley called in a sing-song voice, kicking her legs back and forth as she sat on top of the crate next to me. "All that stuff in the truck can help people if ya just give it to 'em."

"It works then?" The new voice came from the doorway, and I glanced that way to see Legend standing with... Tattletale and Grue?

"Oooh, hiya, Mister Gend." Riley waved happily. "I'm glad your larynx isn't melted anymore."

"It works." Panacea confirmed. "I mean, as far as I can tell. This stuff in the air, that smell, it changes the cells somehow. This stuff changed hers back."

"Then we'll start distributing it." Legend looked directly at Riley. "Listen to me. If this is a trick of some kind, if you're playing one of your disgusting games, I will burn you down myself." My mouth opened, but he held up a hand to stop me from talking, which was itself a pretty impressive feat considering he couldn't even _see_ my mouth.

"If this works, however... if you really did come here with a cure for this zombie infection..." He trailed off, clearly resistant to say it. "... if you did this and there's no surprises, we'll **see** about removing your kill on sight order. No promises."

Finally, I couldn't stop myself any longer. I focused on the two Undersiders. "What are _you guys_ doing with Legend?"

"Us?" Tattletale adopted a casual posture, shrugging elaborately. "Not much."

"We were just telling him how to beat this Endbringer."

**17.05**

I practically choked at those words, eyes widening as I came off my seat. But it was Flechette who managed to speak first, her voice as shocked as mine would have been. "You're telling him what?!"

The sly, cocky little smirk that Tattletale loved so much came back full force. That was obviously the reaction she had been looking for. "Oh, I'm sorry, did you want to know how to beat him too?"

Legend shook his head. "I think that's probably enough, Tattletale. If your info works out, then you can be proud. Right now, it's just an interesting theory."

"What theory?" I finally managed to blurt out, staring back and forth between the two of them.

Legend started to speak, then paused and gestured toward the blonde girl. "Go ahead. It's your idea."

"It's more than an idea." She sounded defensive for just a second, as if the idea of anyone questioning her knowledge as anything less than one hundred percent fact was annoying. She focused on me then. "I just spent the last couple hours doing nothing but staring at that big black cloaked son of a bitch out there." Her hand waved vaguely in the direction that Anubis must have been. "Trying to figure out why no one could hurt him."

"Uh, maybe it's cuz he's an Endbringer?" Panacea spoke up, scowling at Tattletale. "They don't call them that because they're super easy to fight."

The Undersider turned to respond to that, then paused at the sight of Panacea flanked by both Pandoras. "Ahh... huh." A curious look crossed her face then, before she shook it off and focused on Amy. "That's the thing. At least with most Endbringers, there's a sense that you're actually hitting them. It's like hitting a brick wall with a bat or something. A normal person isn't doing much damage, but you can tell you're hitting it. It takes a damn long time to chip away at the thing, but the stronger you are, the more of an impact you make. Either way, you can tell it's being hit after awhile. I remember the Leviathan fight, plus I've seen recordings of other battles, and it's the same sort of thing with an Endbringer. It takes a **lot** to hurt them, huge massive attacks, but you can at least tell that there's some kind of impact. This thing? There's no impact. It absorbs lasers and other energy attacks, touch-attacks can't get anywhere near it, and all the ballistic weapons they send at it don't seem to do anything either."

"So the new one's tougher." Amy shook her head dismissively. "What's your point?"

"That's the thing." Tattletale flashed a smile at the other girl. "It's not tougher. It's _smarter. _See, that thing we're seeing right now? That's not the whole Endbringer. It's like... Think of it as like the Endbringer's costume."

"You really are fucking crazy, aren't you?" Amy was staring at the blonde girl. "What the hell do you mean, the Endbringer's costume?"

"She's not crazy." Grue finally spoke up, grunting the words. "Cocky most of the time, even arrogant. But she's not crazy. Not the way you're thinking. Your power lets you heal people. Hers lets her know things. If she says she's sure about this, I believe her."

Tattletale sighed. "The costume bit was just the best analogy I could think of. Maybe more like its shell. Point is, the Endbringer isn't _in it_. We're throwing everything we've got at what's basically just an empty husk, because the real target already moved on."

"Moved on to where?" Sparrow was the first to find her voice. I'd forgotten the younger hero was there.

"All the zombies we're seeing." Tattletale waved her hands in every direction. "Its animating them with _itself._ They're being brought back with its own energy, its own... life force. That's why the body we're seeing isn't really doing anything but drifting. It's just on autopilot. There's no one home. It's using them as host bodies, basically. Spreading itself out among them."

Flechette straightened up beside me. "So you mean, if you're right, all we have to do kill all the zombies, and that'll kill the Endbringer?"

"Doubtful." Tattletale finally looked regretful, sighing. "Most likely killing enough of its other host bodies that way will just force it back into its shell. Then you've got a regular Endbringer fight on your hands."

"So we're to the point where getting back to a regular Endbringer fight is an _improvement_?" I worked my mouth a little at that before managing the only snappy comment I could think of. "Fuck... us."

"It's better than what we've got right now." Legend pointed out. "But that means killing every single zombie without letting it make any more. Which means that you," he looked toward Riley, "need to get that cure of yours into as many people as possible as fast as possible."

"Why couldn't Panacea just fix everyone?" Flechette asked. "Rather than trust B... that girl to do it."

Amy shook her head. "I tried. But... but it alters the brain, and I can't do anything with the brain. It doesn't work."

Legend took a breath before focusing on Riley again. "As I was saying, how long will it take to inject everyone?"

"Inject everyone?" Riley shrugged. "That'd take forever. That's why I made aerosol versions. Such a faster delivery system. That's what's in the truck."

"How fast can you start the delivery system with what's in the truck?" Legend pressed.

The former villain bit her lip before nudging Emma. "As soon as Sissy starts it up."

"Huh, what?" Emma came back to herself, looking around as though she had no idea what was going on. She had been completely zoned out, focusing on all of her machines. When she saw Legend, the red-haired girl let out a yelp of surprise, bolting to her feet. "Whe-when did you get here?! Err, I mean, when did... uhhh... ummm... sir...?"

Legend was obviously used that sort of reaction (I should know, given my own first reaction to him), because he just smiled faintly, his tone as gentle as possible given the urgency of the situation. "We need you to release the cure that Bo-" He stopped himself, trailing off before correcting. "-that Riley brought. How long will it take you to do that?"

"I... I can do it from here, sir." Emma managed, her voice even quieter than usual as she was obviously fighting not to collapse into fangirl hysterics at the fact that Legend was talking to her. "But, you should pr-probably warn the people outside, because... it's re-really obvious when it's doing it, and they might think that it's doing something bad. Eidolon was already talking about having the truck teleported away s-so that whatever trap Riley set on it wouldn't have a chance to go off."

"I'll take care of all that." Legend promised. "Just start it up as soon as I give you the word, okay?" When Emma nodded mutely, he turned away and used his private comm. I could barely make out a little of his murmured arguments with the other Triumvirate members for a few moments.

Finally, Dragon's voice came through the armbands all around us. "A vaccine to prevent zombie reanimation has been found, and will now be spread throughout the city by the truck that was used to bring it in. Do not be alarmed by the presence of this truck, or by what it is doing."

Once the people had been warned, Legend nodded to Emma, who rose and beckoned to me before moving toward one of the shipping doors. I followed her, and the electric door slid open at our approach. Across the lot, I could see the semi parked there. Further on, I could barely make out the figure of Sundancer at the far end of the lot. One of her miniature suns was floating ahead of her, and she was using it to sweep back and forth, keeping that side of the street completely clear of zombies.

"I thought you'd want to see," Emma said quietly, dragging my attention away from Marissa before gesturing with a hand. As she did so, the back of the truck slid upward, and it rumbled to life. A thick blue smoke began to pour out from within, spreading quickly over the lot and everyone in it. The smoke billowed continuously from the back of the truck, before reversed toward us.

"Pan... umm... Pandora... and umm... Ri-riley..." Emma was looking toward the others. "We should go... drive the truck around... make sure it gets everywhere."

"Oooh, truck ride!" Riley positively bounced, moving to embrace me briefly in what I have to say was actually a pretty nice hug if you discounted the fact that letting the girl touch me was still pretty terrifying even with all that had happened. I _trusted_that she wanted to do the right thing, but I still wasn't exactly certain that she knew what the right thing was most of the time. Her way of 'helping' could easily be almost as bad as her attempts at hurting, if she got too carried away.

She bounced off, jumping from the loading dock door to the pavement below before racing toward the truck. The Pandoras looked at Panacea, then to each other. Finally, one stayed next to her while the other accompanied Riley.

Emma looked to me then, her expression hidden behind that mirrored faceplate. "I... I'll see you after all this, okay?" When I nodded, she hopped down and ran to the truck as well, which was already reversing out of the lot, still billowing that smoke.

It had reached the store by then, and I blinked a few times. "Smells like peppermint."

With Riley, Emma, and one of the Pandoras gone, Legend focused on the rest of us. "Now it sounds like everyone else needs to get out there and kill as many of these zombies as possible. No holding back. Destroy them so we can end this. If Tattletale's right, none of us can even start to hurt this bastard until all the other host bodies are gone."

"I know someone that can really help with that." I pointed out, glancing toward Hunter.

The Triumvirate leader looked that way as well, before nodding. "Tether's right. If we want to end this as soon as soon as possible, you're one of the best ways we have to do that. Because there's still a lot of animals in the woods. Dead animals. There's no way the rest of us can kill all the dead things in there fast enough. But you... all you have to do is walk through the forest and talk. Do it." She looked pained, and even a little horrified, but Legend pressed on. "I know. I understand. But there's no other way to be sure that enough of this monster's bodies are destroyed. Please, can you do this?"

Ruin still looked uncertain, glancing toward Panacea, but Amy nudged her. "Go on. I'll be fine back here. They've got this whole lot covered. None of those zombies are getting in here, not now." After a second, she added, "Besides, I... still have... Pandora." The thought clearly still made her uncomfortable, but I gave her points for at least trying to make it sound like a positive thing.

"Yes." Pandora agreed. "We will not leave our sister's side until this situation is resolved."

Finally, the silent girl nodded, dropping her gaze after a moment to stare rather unhappily at the ground at the thought of using her power to kill everything in the forest.

"You guys go find the rest of your teams." Legend was looking at Flechette, Sparrow, and me. "Tell them it's no holds barred. Kill all the zombies you can, straight out. And keep an eye on this Endbringer. I get the feeling that when its forced back into its body and wakes up, it's not going to like any of us very much."

"Yeah, well the feeling's mutual," I muttered. "He's not on any of my Christmas cards either."

"So basically," Glory Girl was saying, "we're supposed to kill all the zombies we can get our hands on. This changes anything from before... how?"

"Well most of all, Riley just made it so that he can't just keep replenishing his numbers." I pointed out. "No more new dead bodies for him. So we kill all the bodies we can until his... essence or whatever goes back into his actual body and then we fight the Endbringer for real. Plus since the Protectorate isn't bothering with throwing useless attacks at the big body anymore, they're gonna be helping us clear the city out."

Everyone on both Wards teams had been gathered in this small parking lot beside a gas station. At least, everyone that was left, in the Maine team's case. They still looked shell shocked by the loss of Chronicler, and what they'd had to do afterward when his body was reanimated. And apparently poor Dean had been knocked out by some reanimated super strong cape. Which meant just the four of them that were left standing. But all of them, even little Sparrow, were focused on getting through this fight.

"Okay then." Weld looked at his other three teammates. "We spread out, do as much damage as we can, and blow through these zombies."

"Right." Victoria cracked her neck. "Sounds like my kind of plan. Let's do some damage."

It was messy, exhausting work. One zombie after another, we cut through them. There had been very few cape zombies to begin with, and with _everyone _on the Protectorate teams focused on hunting them down, they didn't last long. But the regular zombies, the reanimated normal humans, almost seemed to be endless. And... destroying them wasn't fun. It wasn't fun at all. It was horrible, knowing that the people whose bodies we were destroying had been living, breathing people not that long ago. This Endbringer, it abandoned its own body and used its energy to reanimate the dead. This was an enemy that wouldn't even let us _truly_ fight it until we were forced to destroy thousands of bodies of what had been innocent people. The fact that they were dead before we attacked them didn't help assuage all of the feelings of guilt.

Sparrow used the metal manipulation of her glove to rip down a lamp post, impaling one of the zombies through the upper torso with it. "I hate this." She lamented quietly as I stepped next to her, using a line attached to the zombie's shirt and pants to rip it down along the wound that she had created. "I hate it, I hate it, I hate it."

"We all do." Kid Win spoke up from nearby as he used his backpack laser cannons to blast apart two more zombies that were crawling out from under an overturned truck. His voice was gloomy. "This sucks."

My armband piped up then, "_Dragon incapacitated, BA1." _

The announcement made me cringe. I knew that Dragon's suits were remote piloted, but she was also one of the heavy hitters. If something had taken her suit down... that really hurt us.

Reach and Aid were working together pretty well. They were both standing on Cassie's floating hunk of rubble, while Theo's drones sought out zombies and sent up red flares to draw their attention so that Reach could use one of several damaged cars she was carting around to beat them into nothingness.

Just across the street, Grace evaded three different zombie's grasping attacks at the same time, flipping up and over the last one before turning to kick at his head. At the last second she empowered her foot so that the kick blew apart the zombie's skull. "How many of these things do we have to kill before this Endbringer joins the party?"

Glory Girl dove down out the sky, two different zombies held in her hands before she slammed them directly into the ground, left with little more than gooey paste. "As many as it takes."

The whip that Flechette was using sliced through the two other zombies that had been attacking Grace, before a few more lashings of it cut them into too many pieces to do anything else. "Even when he does wake up, is anybody going to have the energy left to fight him?"

"We have to." My own voice was almost as quiet as the others. "There isn't anyone else who can." Then I used a line to yank myself up to the roof of a nearby building, trying to get a better view. In the distance, I could see the incredible amount of damage that the gathered heroes of the Protectorate were doing. Lasers, rockets, fires of every shape and color, the air was literally flooded with the effects of the powers that were being used to clear the city. And yet, through it all, Anubis (or the empty shell of Anubis, if Tattletale was right) remained disinterested and just floated along.

Below, I saw one of the zombies run face first into Weld's outstretched arm, before the metal boy began the grisly process of cutting the body apart. He glanced up at where I stood on the roof, and asked, "You all right?"

"I'll be okay." I shrugged, attaching a line between a truck I could see at the end of the street, and the shirt of a zombie that was trying to move around the side of a nearby house, slamming them together with all the force I could muster. "What about Sparrow?"  
>I saw him cringe. "I don't know. The poor kid... I don't know how to help her."<p>

Abruptly, the armbands around us buzzed as a computer voice announced, "All capes, return to central extract and gather point. Every cape, return to central extract and gather point immediately."

"Is he active?" Weld asked reflexively, turning to gaze at the dark shadow in the distance.

I shook my head slowly after a second. "It doesn't seem like it. Why would they want us to come back?"

Glory Girl floated down next to me. "Let's find out."

The parking lot seemed even more crowded now, even though Mr. Hebert and Strider had been working to teleport all the civilians away that they could. All of the capes that were still standing were gathered in one spot, around Legend, Alexandria, and Eidolon. Even Panacea stood nearby, flanked by Victoria on one side and Pandora on the other.

Marissa and Jess's latest construct stood behind me, while Ethan and Sam were to my right. Everyone was watching the leader of the Protectorate for answers.

"Thank you." Legend spoke up. "Thank all of you for working so hard today. This... this isn't working. We're all going to be exhausted by the time the rest of the zombies are cleared out, and starting a fight against a fully active Endbringer that way is... bad. So we're going to do something else. But we needed all of you off the streets first."

Before anyone could ask what they were doing, he look toward Eidolon. "Ready?"

The other man nodded, and the two of them flew up a little bit, hovering about fifteen feet above the parking lot. Then Eidolon put his hand out in front of them, and I saw what looked like some kind of hologram appear in front of them. It was a map of the city. There were red dots spread throughout the holographic map.  
>"What are they doing?" Marissa asked quietly, staring up at the pair.<p>

I shook my head. "I don't-" That was as far as I got before dozens of lasers all-but exploded off of Legend. They shot out in every direction, blinding in their intensity as they flew away into the surrounding neighborhoods.

More lasers erupted from Legend, while the dots on the map began to disappear one by one.

My mouth fell open. "Eidolon's using some power to locate the zombies, and another power to display their locations for Legend to direct his lasers toward. They're taking out what's left of the zombies themselves."

One after another, the red dots that indicated the zombie locations vanished, before Legend and Eidolon finally slumped back to the ground. Both looked tired.

"It's not enough." Tattletale's voice spoke up. She was pointing at Anubis's still drifting form, which was close enough to see the jackal-like muzzle beneath the hood shape, but was obviously not ready to fight yet. "There's still one more."

"Or you were wrong," One of the Chicago capes told her flatly.

The other girl shook her head. "I wasn't wrong. I'm telling you, he's still got one major body to animate."

"No there isn't." Eidolon shook his head. "That was all of them that I could sense."

"That's because you can't sense the one that he's hiding _**inside**_ his body." Tattletale was still pointing that way. "Probably the first zombie he resurrected. It's somewhere inside that cloak. That's _**why**_ he's using his power to keep touch-based heroes away from him, so they don't find his first minion."

"Well then we're still boned," Reach pointed out. "Because nobody can get near that thing to find one human body floating around somewhere inside it."

"I can get to it." Victoria's voice was confident.

Cassie shook her head. "Do you have any idea how many of them have been trying? Not even Eidolon managed to get close to the damn thing."

"S-so that's it?" Sparrow's small voice interrupted the silence that came after that. "We... we did all of that, and we can't finish it because no one can get close enough to... to find the last zombie?"

"We'll find a way." Eidolon promised. "We just-"

"Victoria!" Amy suddenly blurted out. I twisted around to see Glory Girl flying straight off toward the floating Endbringer. "Wait—where... where's she going?!"

Laserdream flew up after her cousin, chasing her, along with several other fliers. While we stood there and stared, they approached the massive dark figure. And one by one, all of the capes veered away, their expressions a mixture of terror and sadness as the monster's fear aura overwhelmed them. Even Laserdream had to stop, coming down on top of a building and disappearing from sight.

But Victoria kept going. She flew onward, somehow... _**somehow**_ continuing on past the point that every other cape had given up. Before our eyes, she plunged straight into the Endbringer's form, disappearing inside its cloak for a handful of nerve-wracking seconds.

Then she came out the other side, a squirming, kicking human body held tightly in her arms. Victoria flew another dozen feet before kicking the zombie away from her. It was instantly melted by half a dozen different attacks.

Victoria hovered over our heads, panting, her face white with induced terror while tears ran down her face. "S-see?" She held one fist up. "I told you... I could... do it..." She pointed triumphantly down at Reach. "You... were... wro-"

There was no warning, not even for me, before a jet of black light lanced through the sky. It took Victoria in the back, somehow utterly ignoring her invulnerability and drawing a shriek of agony from the blonde girl before she plummeted to the ground, crashing hard.

Anubis was moving with a purpose now. In the background, I could hear capes shouting to one another, Legend trying to form them into squads. But it was all noise. I hit the ground on my knees next to the fallen blonde girl, who was struggling to sit up.

Ethan was there too, crouched beside Glory Girl, trying to steady her, but the girl was shaking violently. Her skin was horribly pale, and the white of her eyes had gone slightly pink and red. She kept trying to talk, but all she could do was hyperventilate.

Amy came down next to me, shouting her sister's name. "Are you all right?! Victoria, are you okay?! Hold still, I'll fix you. I'll fix you." She put a hand up toward the other girl's face.

Victoria caught her hand, putting their fingers together. Finally, she managed to force out the words. "A... amy..." The effort it took to speak was clearly monumental. "I... I'm... sorry... I..."

"Shhh, shhh." Panacea was shaking her head frantically. "Just wait, wait. I can fix this, I can. I can... what's going on? What's happening?! Her cells are... her body's just shutting down! I can't make it stop!"

All around us, capes called out to one another, as more of the black jets of light shot from Anubis, choosing targets seemingly at random. They were mounting a defense, attacking him in earnest now that he was active. But none of it mattered. Not right then.

"Amy... Amy... listen..." Blood leaked from the Victoria's eyes, staining her cheeks red. "I...I'm... sorry... I didn't... love... you... the way that... you wanted me to. I... knew... I just... I was scared of losing you... if I acknowledged it... and... told you that I didn't feel that way. I love you, Amy. You're my sister... my... best friend... I wanted... to love you the way you wanted me to. But... but I... I... I..."

Tears blinded me then, hot and bitter, as a different voice spoke up in the wake of Victoria's silence.

"_Glory Girl deceased, BA1."_

**Interlude 17 – Panacea**

Panacea. To the Greeks, she had been a goddess of universal cure, the daughter of Asclepius, the god of medicine, and Epione, the goddess of easing pain. Her name had become synonymous with the very _idea_ of a single substance that could remedy all ills.

Amy Dallon had not been given the name lightly. Her power had, up to this point, seemed to be that perfect cure that the Greeks had imagined. Beyond simple healing, it allowed her near limitless manipulation of the biological form. Aside from her own self-imposed rules brought on by her fear of what might happen if she went too far and actually altered someone's brain, and her inability to affect herself, she could heal or alter any biological damage that she could touch.

She had never failed to heal any injury or illness that she actively _tried_ to fix, as long as it didn't cross into her refusal to work on brains.

_So why, __**why**__ couldn't she fix this?_

Her throat was all-but torn from screaming her sister's name as she pressed her hands against Victoria's face and arm. The untouchable, indomitable blonde had been Amy's beautiful valkyrie, her warrior angel, the girl she had loved since she was old enough to understand what that kind of non-familial love actually meant. Seeing an injured Victoria had been what caused Amy to trigger into her healing powers to begin with. Her ability, the power that made so many people think she was important, that was supposed to make her special, _**was useless. **_The power that had only come about out of Amy's desperation to save the girl she loved, was failing to do that very thing now.

It was failing.

_**She**_ was failing.

Her scream choked off as Assault tried to say something to her, but she shoved the man aside, practically clawing at his eyes as he tried to pull her away from Victoria. Falling atop her sister's dead, rapidly decaying body, Amy put her hand back where it had been. Tears blinded her, forcing the girl to find her sister's cheek through feel alone, against skin that was actively dissolving under her touch, the bones that made up Victoria's skull turning to powder even as her skin and muscles become little more than goo.

Tether and Assault were both trying to pull her away from her sister's body, while she screamed for them to stop, to leave her alone, to let her keep trying. One more moment, one more touch, one more _**push**_ with her power and she could make the cells stop degenerating.

She clawed and fought her way back to what remained of Victoria, tears so thick that she could see nothing through them. Nothing. Her power could find nothing to grasp, no way to force the cells to regenerate. They were deteriorating right in front of her. No matter what she did, no matter how she forced her power to try to undo the damage, it slipped away. Victoria's body was literally melting and crumbling away, and she couldn't stop it. The power of the Endbringer was _**stronger**_ than hers.

Assault pulled her away from her sister once more, prying her hands free of what was, by that point, little more than a puddle, all but indistinguishable from the already blood-coated mud that surrounded them. Amy fought his grip. Her throat was raw, the pain urging her forward as she fought with every ounce of strength she had to save Vicky. She screamed words that even she didn't understand, cursing the Endbringer, herself for failing, the others for trying to pull her away, even Vicky for getting herself hurt, for getting herself...

A renewed sense of desperation accompanied the forceful blocking of that thought, as Amy eeled her way out of Assault's grasp, the man clearly hesitant to hold her too tightly, lunging back toward... nothing. Her hands, her hands that had for so long been able to heal anything they touched, could not distinguish between the remains of her sister, and the mud that she had been laying in. The body of the vibrant, powerful girl within had been broken down until nothing was left, nothing for Amy to hold, nothing for Amy to touch, nothing for Amy to cling to, save for her costume.

Hands clutching the stained, ruined fabric, she fell against the mud and pavement. Heaving sobs ripped their way through her suddenly frail, cold body, Amy Dallon fell in every way it was possible to fall. Her eyes closed, and she willed herself to feel nothing, to know nothing.

The fight carried on above and around her, but Amy cared for none of it. She simply curled up there in the mud, with the remains of Victoria's costume held tightly to her chest, wishing, praying, cursing for a reprieve, for a miracle that would not come.

Blessed unconsciousness came upon Amy then, her last thoughts a desperate plea that the empty void that had torn her heart would take what remained of her soul so that she would never feel anything again.

"Why won't she get up? Doesn't she know that people are hurt out here, people she can actually save? Doesn't she care?"

The voice was unfamiliar, though the sentiment was not. Amy had been lying in this hospital cot for... she didn't know whether it was hours or days, lacking any sense of how much time that had passed whenever she drifted off. She'd woken up occasionally, but always willed herself to sleep once more, embracing the world of dreams, where Victoria still lived. Each time she awoke, she didn't have to wait long before someone within earshot would wonder when their healer was going to get back to work.

This time, before she could flee back into her dreams, the sound of footsteps within the room alerted her to someone else's presence. The person had obviously been sitting near the bed, and now crossed to the door to close it, muffling the voice of the person who had been complaining.

Was it Crystal, or Aunt Sarah? Maybe even Uncle Neil. It probably wouldn't be Mark. If he knew about his real daughter's death, he wouldn't be sitting quietly in the room of the person who had failed to save Victoria in spite of all the power she'd been given. His daughter was dead because of Amy's failure, because she hadn't been strong enough, because she hadn't been good enough.

She deserved his hatred. She deserved everyone's hatred.

Finally, unable to will herself back to sleep, she opened her eyes and gazed at the ceiling. It was only then that Amy realized she wasn't in a hospital room at all. At least, not a patient's room. Instead, she was in the break room, the area that doctors and nurses pulling those incredibly long shifts used to catch a cat nap here and there. She herself had used it, to take a break from healing without leaving.

"Amy." Crystal was standing by the bed, her hand brushing the back of her cousin's face. No. Not her cousin, Amy thought bitterly. Just some girl she knew. Her _cousin_ had died, because Amy had failed to save her.

"I'm sorry." Her voice was so soft, so frail, that she didn't realize at first that she had spoken aloud.

Crystal's voice was surprisingly gentle for someone who should loath her at least as much as she loathed herself just then. "Why are you sorry?"

Amy shook her head rapidly several times, unable to speak. It took her several tries to manage two single, weak words. "I tried." The tears came back, forcing Amy to close her eyes as her voice broke. "I tried so hard. I tried to save her. I couldn't. I just... I just..."

Crystal sat on the side of the bed. When her hands came down on Amy's shoulders, the girl tensed reflexively, trying to be ready for whatever revenge the older girl would want for her failure.

Instead, she felt Crystal lay down beside her in the cot, before she forcibly turned the other girl around so that they were face to face. Amy immediately tried to turn her gaze away, ashamed, but Crystal put a hand against her cheek and made her keep looking.

"Amy, listen to me. If you never listened to me before in your life, and never listen to me after, at least listen to me now. Victoria's death-" The words made Amy's eyes flood once more and she tried again to look away, but Crystal's hand was firm. "Victoria's death was not your fault. You did nothing wrong, Amy. You would never, _ever_ stop trying to save her. Even after there was... after there was nothing left, you wouldn't stop. This was _**not**_ your fault. You tried. You never stopped trying."

Amy's head shook as she stared into the eyes that should have hated her very existence for her failure. "But... but I... failed. I failed and she... she's..."

Renewed tears took her before she could continue, and she felt Crystal pull her limp body closer, into a firm embrace. Her head shook even more then. "No. No, no, no. Can't... hate me. You hate me. Failed. Couldn't save her. Can't. Can't..." The words wouldn't come, wouldn't sort themselves out in her own head, let alone in her voice. She couldn't think, didn't want to think. She wanted to dream. She wanted to leave this hurt behind and go back to Victoria.

"No, Amy." Crystal's voice, though tinged with obvious grief, was firm. "I don't hate you."

Blinking up at that, the words enough to draw her away from the dreams that she longed for so much, Amy shook her head slowly, managing a weak, "Why?"

Crystal leaned back a little to look down at the other girl. "Because you're my cousin, and I care about you. Because we're family, Amy."

"Not... really." Amy's voice was barely audible. "Not related. Not really family."

"Oh Amy." Crystal shook her head before wrapping both arms around the other girl. She embraced her and pressed a kiss to the top of her head before holding the shaking, grieving girl to her as she spoke firmly. "We _**are**_ family. You've been my cousin for a decade, Amy. I've grown up with you. I know you like I know my dad, like I know my mother, like I knew Victoria. Blood be damned, Amy, we are family, and I am not abandoning you."

"I deserve-" Amy started to say.

Crystal interrupted, tightening her embrace to cut off the younger girl's words. "You deserve _**this.**_ Because we're family. Because I love you, Amy. Doesn't matter how it happened or where you came from, you're my cousin. You will _always_ be my cousin."

Their eyes met again, Amy forcing herself to meet Crystal's gaze. "I... I'm so... so sorry." Same words, different meaning. Before, she had meant that she was sorry that she let Victoria die. Now, this time, she meant that she was sorry Victoria was dead. But there was no way that Crystal could understand the difference.

Yet the other girl simply nodded. "I'm sorry too." She said quietly, before using a hand to gently press Amy's head down, tucking it against her shoulder while stroking her hair. "I'm sorry too."

They stayed like that for some time, and the older girl had drifted off before Amy forced herself to stir. For once, she resisted the urge to fall asleep, pulling back from the promise of her sister's presence in her dreams.

Instead, she made herself sit up, swinging her legs off the side of the cot, moving carefully to avoid waking her cousin.

She wouldn't abandon Crystal either. But now, at this moment, she couldn't sleep. Not when there were people that she could help, people that her power could rescue from feeling the loss that she felt.

Up to that point, her power had almost been a burden. It was her **job** to save people, and she had, over the time she had spent in the hospital, grown almost tired of fixing them. She had grown so complacent in the use of her power, that _**saving someone's life**_ had become a chore. She hadn't truly understood what she was doing, what her power actually _meant _or how useful it was, until it had not been useful at all.

Now she knew. Now she understood. The people she healed, and the people who cared about _them_, mattered. Her power wasn't an obligation. It was a gift. She could prevent people from feeling what she felt now. She could spare them that agony.

Walking quietly out of the room, Amy prepared herself to heal anyone she could, while truly understanding for perhaps the first time exactly **why** she was doing it. It was no longer an obligation, no longer a chore.

It was her choice.

They'd beaten the Endbringer, obviously. Amy learned that much in the days that followed. The creature's primary attack, the death beam that had killed Victoria, had claimed nine more capes on top of those who had died to his zombies, before the remaining joint efforts had finally driven him to withdraw, apparently fading into shadow before disappearing entirely from sight.

Apparently, the attack the creature used, the jet of black light that had stolen Victoria's life, was tied directly to that same zombie aura that the Endbringer had spread throughout the city during its aimless wandering.

From what they could tell from reports and the footage that had been obtained, the Endbringer wasn't actually sending those jets of black energy outward to hit their targets, despite what it had looked like to the naked eye. Rather, when slowed down enough, it had become clear that the so-called 'beam' actually manifested fully formed, in the exact same instant.

Basically, Anubis was able to coalesce any of what they were calling his 'death radiation' that he had been spreading to make his zombies, into a physical attack. Along any line of sight (at least, they were hoping it was line of sight), he could instantly transform that death energy into a solid line that would, upon contact with any biological life form, immediately and irrevocably force the cells of that creature to break apart.

Victoria's forcefield had been unable to save her, because the 'death beam' had manifested inside and through her at the exact same time as it had manifested everywhere else. It was similar to Narwhal's ability to create forcefields that would appear inside a person's body and bisect them. It wasn't so much a beam that had 'struck' the girl, as it was a death-causing line that had been summoned into existence, formed out of the energy that had been spread over the entire town by that point. Some of the energy that was converted into that death-line had been inside Victoria herself, which meant that it didn't need to get past Victoria's defense, because it had literally manifested already inside it. All the forcefield had done was prevent that one tiny part of the otherwise solid line of death from forming. Apparently interruptions in the line did not prevent the rest from coalescing.

Apparently not even Tether's injury/death sense was able to properly predict those particular attacks. The Protectorate thinkers were still working on exactly why that was, but it likely had something to do with that death energy or whatever they ended up calling it overwhelming her power's detection. The air itself was irradiated with that aura. Her power's radar probably couldn't see the tree of a single individual's death for the forest of death energy that surrounded them.

At least, that was her best theory.

As for Amy herself, her efforts to save her sister had failed because she could not affect the entire body at the speed that the Endbringer's attack could. Essentially, every time her power told one section of the body's cells to stop degenerating, all the other parts that had been altered by the attack overwrote that change. Amy was a powerful healer, but even she could only focus on one problem at a time, while the Endbringer's attack not only altered every cell in the body at once, but also left behind a command that forced every cell that had been changed to constantly check for cells that hadn't been altered (or that had been fixed), and reapply the alteration. Fix Part A, then try to move on to Part B, and Parts C through Z and onward would immediately undo the Part A fix.

Two days after Victoria's funeral, Amy found herself standing in the same long-since closed down motel restaurant that she had been standing in when the news of Anubis's existence had interrupted her meeting with Pandora.

"Amy-Sister?" The voice of the other her was tinged with curiosity. "Why have you come back here?"

It took her a moment to turn that way, looking toward the face that was nearly identical to her own, save for the lack of freckles and slightly darker skin tone.

"I really treated you like shit, didn't I?" Amy's voice was quiet as she stared at Pandora. "Which one are you?"

"This Pandora-self is called Gamma, Amy-Sister." The clone answered simply.

"Gamma," Amy echoed the name before continuing, "I... I was just... remembering that... when we were in the hospital, that first time we met, you... or whichever Pandora was there, said things about... about Victoria. You said that you... missed her. I... you... were me... you came from me, so you... felt... you cared about her too, didn't you?"

Gamma was silent and still for a moment before giving a jerky, quick little head movement that was almost more spasm than nod. "We... miss... her more now."

Amy's tears returned, but she blinked them away. She had to swallow the lump in her throat a couple of times before managing to speak. "Me too. I—" The words wouldn't come, and all she could do was extend a hand toward her mirror image "Come... come on."

"Where are we going?"

"To... to the cemetery." Amy looked away for a moment, eyes closing while a cold shudder of grief shot through her. "The... funeral... was a couple days ago. But..." Her tears, so familiar by that point, stained her vision once more. "But everyone who... who loved Vicky should... should get to say... g-" Her voice choked off briefly. "... goodbye."

"We... do not know how to... say goodbye, that way." Pandora admitted, her voice as she tried to find the right words sounding far more vulnerable than Amy remembered it.

Cringing a little, she kept her hand extended toward what might as well have been her twin. "I think... saying goodbye... is something that you... and I... are going to have to teach each other."

"Together?" Pandora-Gamma questioned, lifting her hand to hesitantly clasp the other girl's.

Amy nodded, interlocking her fingers with the other girl's before nodding as she started to walk with Pandora.

"Yeah. Together."


	18. Arc 18: Respite

_**Notes: **__scranity - Yup, Spider-Mads is an ongoing thing. ;) _

_feathers - thank you for reviewing! I thought it was a good time to spell out what some of Pandora's limitations were and show that she does have personality (almost 20 of them, to be precise!), _

_Imageination - Already responded to you in PM, but for posterity's sake, Clockblocker graduated to the Protectorate since it was noted in canon that his birthday was sometime in the summer and that he would be graduating._

**18.01**

For a normal person, losing a single friend to violence would be a tragedy that took months to even start to recover from, to get back to some sense of normality. For capes, we didn't have that luxury. If we shut down, there wasn't anyone behind us to take up the slack.

We pressed on because we had to. The days kept going and we took them one at a time. The pain was there, as it would be likely forever, but it didn't rule us. We helped each other, we trained, we fought the little battles, and we kept going. Not because Victoria's death didn't matter, but because it did. We would make it matter, by going on, by fighting.

Three weeks after the horrible Anubis battle that had taken the lives of so many people, including my teammate and friend, I was facing an entirely different sort of conflict. One that was, at least, less likely to result in death.

"You know, it's too bad we're such good friends."

I looked at Dennis after he said that, raising an eyebrow. "Why's that?"

He grinned back at me, rolling his head back to crack his neck. "Because that's gonna make me feel really horrible about kicking your butt up and down this court for the next couple hours."

We were in one of several gyms in the PRT building, standing on the edge of the basketball court. All around us, the members of both the Protectorate and Wards milled around.

Sticking my tongue out at the red-haired boy, I gave him a shove. "Big talk, little man."

"Little man?" He echoed in disbelief. "I'm like a foot taller than you."

Ethan chose that moment to interject while he walked by, rolling one of the orange balls back and forth in his hands. "Like that's hard. There are still some theme park rides that she's not allowed to go on."

Attaching a line between the ball and the floor near me, I yanked it from Ethan's hands to my own. Then I threw the ball back at his head. "I'm not _**that**_ short!"

Catching the ball easily, Ethan gave an elaborate shrug. "Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. It makes the top of the kitchen cupboard a really good place to hide things so you'll never find them."

Before I could finish sputtering a response to that, a pair of arms wrapped around me from behind while Marissa remarked, "Are you people making fun of my tiny girlfriend?"

"Nah," Dennis was still grinning. "Just congratulating you on getting a significant other that can easily fit in the overhead compartment if you ever take a plane trip."

"Hey, some girls get those little dogs that fit in their purses. I went for something I could date."

"Jerks." I informed them. "You're aaaaaaaallll complete and total jerks."

"Wards and Protectorate, let's get this show on the road!" Miss Militia called out, and the groups that had been mingling around all migrated toward the middle of the court.

Snickering, Marissa gave me a quick hug and then whispered, "You're cute, but we're still gonna beat you."

I gave her a poke in the stomach. "At least there's no push-ups involved this time, huh?"

It was Marissa's turn to stick her tongue out at me. "I still say you made up that bowling rule to screw with me."

"Just wait until you see what kind of rules I add if we ever play Monopoly," I teased before splitting off from the older girl to join my team.

We had been kept busy in the weeks that had passed since Anubis's attack, as the Protectorate and the government tried to sort out what to do about an entire town and surrounding countryside in Maine that was uninhabitable. Riley's inoculation didn't provide _permanent_ immunity to the zombie aura, unfortunately. So there was no way it could be manufactured in large enough doses to keep everyone who wanted to live in that area totally safe.

All of which meant that the area that had been affected had to be totally walled off to prevent crazy people from sneaking in and trying to spread the plague elsewhere. That had required dozens of tinkers, teleporters, and other capes working together to seal the area before several planeloads of napalm had been dropped to make absolutely certain that anything that could possibly have been affected was destroyed.

The total cost and effort to secure the area had to have been astronomical. And assuming the Endbringers continued their previous schedule, it would happen every year or so, whenever Anubis's turn happened to come up. Not that the others were any better, but the fact that Anubis's aura was something that couldn't be fixed, even if the land around it _looked_ totally fine was somehow even more depressing. Or maybe it was just because this one was new, and seemed to be proof that the Endbringers would keep coming without limit.

Yet, in the face of all that, what else could we do but move on and keep living? Plans were made, more tinkers and thinkers tried to work out ways to counter this newest Endbringer alongside his siblings, and the world kept spinning. We had other threats to deal with, like Marquis' and Lung's little war that seemed to have at least settled into a sort of grudging peace as their chosen areas had been staked out.

Amy seemed to have found renewed purpose after the horrible loss of Victoria. She was living with Crystal, since her adoptive father had apparently all but shut down after the death of his daughter so soon after that of his wife. Not only was she visiting the hospital more often than she did before, but she seemed much more driven while she was there. It didn't come off as though it was some kind of chore for her to be there any more.

Most people knew about Panacea's renewed determination and focus on healing. What they _didn't_ know, what only a few did know about, was Amy's side project. For the last couple of weeks, she had been working on **something** with Riley at the motel. Even I wasn't allowed to know what it was, only that it was something that required both Panacea and Riley to work long hours on, and that they had taken over the entire floor of the motel _beneath_ the floor Dinah's group had already been living in for it.

I'd asked Dinah about other people in the motel, and she had just said that there weren't any other people, without explaining further. I'd decided not to press further than that.

My thoughts were interrupted by Chris, who called out from somewhere behind me, "Hey Miss Militia! Since you guys lost your team captain and the guy that would've been your center, you could all just forfeit if you want to save yourselves the embarrassment of being beaten by teenagers."

Armsmaster and Manpower had both left the Protectorate team. Armsmaster had transferred to the Maine Protectorate in an attempt to beef up their team in the wake of all the crazies that were trying to break into the quarantined area. Armsmaster specifically had been requested given his reputation as a tinker. He'd been offered leadership of the team since they'd lost their leader to one of Anubis's death beams, as well as the reputation as the person who held Maine together through the tragedy.

Manpower hadn't left the city, but he did transfer from the Protectorate to PCIPS, apparently to spend more time with his wife. He'd been partners with her through basically their entire superhero career, and their schedules differing so much had been difficult. I also had the feeling that he'd wanted to give Crystal a chance to be on her own rather than constantly on a team with her dad.

Miss Militia was spinning the basketball on her finger while raising an eyebrow at Kid Win. "Confident, are we, Christopher?"

"I'm just saying," he replied while moving to stand next to me, "you guys might've had a chance with Armsmaster and Manpower, but now you've got nothing. Meanwhile, we've got... our secret weapon. Right, secret weapon?"

A figure dropped out of the air from where she had been hovering, landing behind Chris before jumping up onto his back to hang around his neck. "Right!" Sparrow, who outside of her costume was actually an adorable little Native American girl named Mika, piped up while settling her chin on Chris's shoulder. She bared her teeth at Miss Militia in what she apparently thought was an intimidating grimace. "We're gonna kick your butts!"

With the loss of her hometown, Mika and her family had moved down to be as far away from those traumatic events as possible while giving her the chance to continue to exercise her growing powers. They'd moved in right next door to Ethan and Sam's place, and Flechette/Lily had come with them.

The two of them, Sparrow and Flechette, had been brought onto our team after the death of Victoria, which actually made Lily our team leader. It was a work in progress, since she'd had no interest whatsoever in leading, but the rules stated that the oldest member had to be leader, and she was a year older than me.

That, actually, was a fact that I was infinitely grateful for. I wasn't ready to lead a Girl Scout troop, let alone a team of teenage superheroes. Lily's presence had at least saved me from that horror for awhile.

Chris and Mika had hit things off immediately. In spite of the several year age difference, the two were already incredibly good friends, to the point that they practically finished each other's sentences. Chris had actually helped Lily, Mika, and her family move into their new house.

"Maybe it escaped your notice," Sam put in mildly from where she was standing next to Ethan. "But we still outnumber you, eight to seven."

This time, it was my turn to shrug. "Only five people on the court at once anyway. And you old people need the extra man so you get more time to rest."

That caused a series of ooohs to pass through the group, while Ethan just pointed at me. "Who are you calling old, Ewok?"

From the other side of me, Cassie put in, "Hey, which team is it that includes someone whose power involves taking a nap?"

Sitting in her wheelchair, Jess waved. "I think the better question is, which team includes someone who can beat you senseless while _**taking**_ that nap."

"All right, all right." Miss Militia shook her head. "Is the impartial ref ready?"

Everyone glanced toward Hunter, who stood at the side of the court with a small tablet device in the one hand. She nodded, hitting a button on the tablet so that a pleasant female voice spoke out, "Ready."

"Great." Miss Militia tossed the ball to her. "Let's get this game started. The sooner we beat you kids, the sooner you can get ready for the first day of school tomorrow."

Lily, who had turned out to be a pretty Japanese-American girl under her costume, finally cleared her throat. "Uh huh, sure. We all know you retirees have to get home in time to watch Matlock."

More good natured ribbing went back and forth, as the two teams took their places. On our side, Lily had chosen to sit out at first, along with Theo, which left Missy, Cassie, Chris, Mika, and me to take the court. We were up against Hannah, Kayden, Dennis, Ethan, and Crystal to start out.

Obviously, Mika was chosen to play the tipoff, which put her up against Ethan. When he saw the tiny eleven-year old approach to stand across from him, the man gave her a little grin. "You want a step ladder so we can be at the same altitude?"

Her response was to bare her teeth again, another attempt at intimidation that just made her even cuter. This time she actually _growled, _which was at the very least the most adorable thing I'd seen all week.

As soon as both teams were ready, Ruin tossed the ball up and then backed off quickly.

Ethan leapt for it, but a glowing forcefield appeared right over his head, blocking him in. Meanwhile, Mika flew straight up, her bracelets glowing as she caught the ball with the hand that wasn't holding her staff and did a somersault in the air to throw it back toward Chris.

Before the ball could reach him, a weaker forcefield appeared for it to bounce off and into Crystal's hands as she flew in to catch it, dissolving her shield before spinning in the air to throw the ball toward Hannah. It bounced once off the court and to the other woman's waiting hands. Or it would have, if I hadn't attached a line between the ball and one of the gloves that I was wearing for this game.

The ball was nearly to me when Ethan leapt in the way, catching the ball and blocking my line of sight to it. As soon as it was free of the tether since I couldn't see it anymore, he twisted around and used the momentum he'd stolen from the flying ball to throw it all the way down the court toward the basket.

It fell short about six feet away from Ethan, who blinked at the ball in dismay a second before Missy scooped it up and winked at him, undoing the spatial distortion that she'd made.

Missy threw the ball to Cassie, who touched it for a brief second before grinning as she made the ball fly behind her back, then high up into the air above the court. A second later, it plummeted straight toward the basket... a second before a gunshot rang out, and the ball was literally blown apart.

Lowering her pistol, Hannah waved a hand with a smile. "Oops. Guess that makes it your ball."

From above the court, the hovering drone that had been made specifically for this purpose dropped one of the two dozen balls it was holding. Mika caught the ball and took it out at the half-court line.

She bounced it in, and I used a line to send it back toward Cassie. Unfortunately, Dennis managed to slap a hand against the ball as it was passing him, and the next sixty seconds were spent with everyone anxiously waiting for it to pop out of its frozen state (the rules being that if the ball went out of action for longer than that, it was considered out of play and a new ball had to be dropped in).

I saw the ball start to drop, only three seconds before the time limit. The second it did, a carefully calculated blast of light from Kayden nearly blinded me, and I recoiled with a yelp. From the sound of things, most of my teammates were reeling as well.

By the time I blinked the spots out of my eyes, Kayden had taken the ball and was flying straight down the court toward our basket. Chris, who had been protected from being blinded by the tinker-goggles that he chose to wear, flew backwards on his flight pack, trying to block her. Just as it looked like she was going to slip past him given her greater maneuverability, Chris stopped short. He hovered there in the air and winked, just as one of his cannons shot out what looked like a pale blue orb about the side of a tennis ball. The orb cracked apart in the air, unveiling into a weighted net that wrapped itself around Kayden, dragging her to the floor before she could safely blast it away from her.

The ball went tumbling from her hands, just in time for Mika to catch it. The new youngest Ward tucked the ball close to her body and dropped straight to the floor. As soon as she landed, the girl's belt buckle began to glow pink, and Mika's body was almost immediately transformed into what looked like a stone statue.

The adults, clearly unprepared for this new power of Mika's, looked around in confusion as no less than six other Mika statues appeared at various spots along the court. They were splitting up to cover as many as possible, when all the statues abruptly crumbled into dust. The real Sparrow was revealed underneath one of the statues nearest the other end of the court, and she threw the ball straight up in the air.

Chris, who had been waiting as if they'd planned it, caught the ball perfectly as he hovered there, and tossed it down through the basket just before Crystal's laser shot could destroy it. The ball dropped through the net and a buzzer accompanied the adjustment of our score on the board from zero to two.

"So that's the power she's been working on for the past week." Dennis remarked from nearby. "She's been so secretive about it."

I nodded. "Apparently she can choose the number of statues that appear and where they are, and which one she pops out of. Kind of a very complicated method of line-of-sight teleporting coupled with decoy targets."

"Pretty swanky." He gave me a look then. "But we're still gonna whup your butts."

Jogging up next to me, Cassie grabbed my arm and pulled me away. "C'mon, they're taking the ball out. I thought we were gonna have to drag you away from your girlfriend, not the ginger."

"Good job, guys!" Lily called from the sideline. "Chris, Mika, you guys earned a break for a minute. Theo and I can take a turn."

Floating down to the floor, Chris exchanged high fives with his pint sized partner, before nodding sagely. "Sure thing, gotta give the old folks a sporting chance."

"Keep talking, little tinker boy!" Marissa called to him from where she was sitting next to Jess. "It's gonna make that crow you eat that much tastier."

In reply, Chris just pointed at the scoreboard, which Hunter was also controlling. "All I see is two points for us, and none for you guys. Should've taken us up on that offer to spot you some so you could at least get on the board."

It was Kayden who spoke up, holding the ball over her head as she passed it back and forth from hand to hand. "There's lots of game left. Shouldn't let yourself be... _**blinded**_ by pride."

The emphasis of the word was all the warning we had, before another blast of bright light sent us staggering while the ball was tossed back into play. A moment later, the buzzer announced that they had scored while we were reeling and blinded.

She was right, it was going to be a long game.

**18.02**

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, what was that final score?" Ethan was holding his hand up to his ear as though waiting for a response. "It was ummm, god I'm having such a hard time remembering. Fifty-seven to... what was it?"

"Oh shut up." I rolled my eyes. "It was fifty-seven to fifty-six. I don't think that's a lot to brag about."

"Psshhh, it's everything to brag about," he informed me, grinning. "Cuz _**our**_ score was fifty-seven."

I gave him a shove as we walked down the hall of PRT HQ together, heading for the exit. "Lucky shot. Soooo lucky. You guys were totally down the whole time until the last second."

Still grinning even as I shoved him, Ethan caught my arms and spun me around right there in the hall, making me yelp. "What can I say? Last second saves are my specialty."

As he spun me, I lifted my legs so that my feet were pressed briefly against the wall, then used a line from my shoes to the wall to shove myself up and over Ethan's head and out of his grasp. Twisting in mid-air, I came down on the other side of him, then immediately dropped to roll to the side as he turned so that I could pop up, still behind him, and poked the man in the back. "Over here."

Snorting as he turned, Ethan brought his hand down on my head, practically covering my face. "Okay, now you're a ninja Ewok." Lifting his hand off, he chuckled. "I take it the lessons with Hunter, Marissa, and Grace are paying off then?"

Smiling, I turned to keep walking while giving him a shrug. "What can I say, they're good teachers."

One of my biggest problems, I'd learned very quickly after setting out to be a cape, was that I had a tendency to stop and focus to make my lines. Standing still, when you didn't have any kind of personal defensive ability, was a pretty bad idea. The trouble was, actually learning how to fight and move constantly took time and a decent trainer. I'd had the choice of either not using my powers while I learned to fight and move better, or using them as well as I could while learning, and just gradually improve.

I'd chosen the latter. At first I'd learned from Vista and the boys, taking in basic lessons like throwing a punch, escaping from a hold, and so on. Later I'd tried to learn a bit from a couple PRT officers, but it was hard for them to teach a girl my size with my abilities. It was very much a trial and error sort of thing. It was like my powers would benefit immensely from the kind of agility I just hadn't had when I initially got them, and the powers themselves hadn't actually come with that kind of bonus.

Eventually, I'd begun to learn flexibility and basic gymnastics from Marissa, who had apparently been both a dancer and a gymnast. When Ruin had joined us, she began to teach the whole Wards team how to better defend ourselves without powers. And given that she lived with me, I was able to take some extra lessons.

Finally, I'd met Grace, whose real name was Katherine Oldershaw, during the Anubis fight. Her way of moving around, the graceful (yeah, I totally understood her codename now) way that she all-but danced through the battle like her moves had been choreographed ahead of time, it was the kind of thing I'd wanted to learn.

So, I'd asked her to help me do just that. And for the past several weeks, I'd been able to learn from her. Of course, there had been the distance to worry about, but all I'd had to do was mention the idea to Crystal's mother. The next day, both she and Miss Militia had arranged for several different Protectorate teleporters to take turns ferrying either me or Katherine to the other every other day. It made me feel guilty at first, making people take time out of their day to teleport us back and forth just so I could have yet another fighting instructor. But the capes who were doing the transporting assured me that if they weren't taking one of us back and forth, they'd be stuck transporting important people in suits that thought of them more as particularly talkative cars than as human beings. They thought I was more fun to talk to, which I suppose wasn't that hard when compared to some of the self-obsessed political power players I'd seen.

Still, I always tried to thank them for the jump, and made sure they knew that I was more than willing to _wait_ if they were busy. My desire for training didn't override their own lives.

That was pretty much how my last few weeks had been spent. I threw myself into it so heavily at least partly to avoid thinking about Victoria's death, and the accompanying feeling of despair that even more Endbringers would just keep coming and pick us off one by one.

And it was working. I'd learned the very basics from the other Wards, I'd gradually improved that with what little the PRT officers could do, then learned even more from Hunter. Grace, and her fluid way of fighting while constantly moving, appeared to have been the last piece of the puzzle for me to figure out how my _**own**_ method of fighting should work. It was still taking time, and I wasn't perfect by a long shot, but I was gradually getting better at moving and fighting without taking the time to stand still. My agility and reflexes were improving steadily, which was a good thing, considering the kind of threats that kept presenting themselves.

There were two benefits that my powers provided toward my attempts to learn to be more mobile during a fight, even if they hadn't magically gifted me with the ability to do a standing triple full layout (essentially a flip with three full twists), both tied to my breaker ability. First, it stopped me from feeling nauseous after that kind of motion, and second, the increased flexibility and lack of accompanying pain seemed to allow me to learn to do it much faster. So once I _**did**_ start learning to do that sort of thing, it came naturally, and I was learning to do things in weeks and months that apparently took non-powered people years to get down.

Dennis and Marissa met us at the doorway into the parking lot, the former giving me a smug smile. "So what kind of excuses did she make up so far?"

"Pfffft." I rolled my eyes. "You're the guys that need excuses. You've got how much more experience combined and you only manage to win by one point at the very last second?"

Marissa was chuckling even as she pointed out, "Too bad basketball games don't work on a sliding scale of victory. One point's as good as fifty. Still a win."

"Oh you guys just wait." I pointed a finger at each of the three in turn. "Next time, you're going down."

There was more teasing back and forth as we walked toward Ethan's truck. Hunter was already there waiting for us, leaning against the truck while browsing something on her phone. As we approached, she looked up and then smiled immediately.

It wasn't me she was smiling at, I knew. It was Dennis. It had become obvious, at least to me, that Hunter had... feelings for him, but refused to do anything about it. She was still terrified of hurting anyone with her power, let alone a person she cared about, so she kept herself closed off. Yet every time she saw him lately, that smile came back. It had started when we met up with him at the mall to get Hunter some clothes, and she'd revealed that she liked the _Seventh Reach_ books as well as both of us did. All three of us had bonded over talking about the series, but most importantly, Hunter had **obviously** grown attached to the boy, which had become even more obvious as she had begun to train all of us, before he'd moved up to the Protectorate.

Dennis, of course, was oblivious to her feelings, which made me want to hit him repeatedly. Because it was obvious that he thought she was cute too, but he took her being afraid of saying anything about her own interest as evidence of her _lack_ of interest, which was just crazy talk.

"All right," Ethan was saying. "You lemmings ready to head for the store? We can go one in the front with me and three in the back. Who wants to go where?"

My first instinct was to stay with Mars. Yet that would have meant splitting up Dennis and Hunter, and if it was the last thing I did, I was going to make Dennis notice that she **was** actually interested.

"Go ahead Mars." I gave her a little push to the front. "I've gotta make sure Dennis knows just what a traitor to his old team he is."

Her eyebrows went up, before she glanced toward Dennis and Hunter. Then she rolled her eyes and gave me a knowing look before turning to get in the front passenger side.

"You know, you _**are**_ sixteen now." Ethan pointed out with his hand on his own door. "You could take driving lessons. Most teenagers can't _wait_ to get their license."

I shrugged while using a hand and a pair of lines on my feet to vault myself into the back of the pick-up. "Most teenage girls can't zip around town on invisible tethers. I don't see how chugging along through rush hour traffic in a big metal box is supposed to compare to flinging myself from building to building in a what's basically an ongoing horizontal skydive."

Both of the guys both shook their heads disbelievingly at that, while I settled myself into a corner, shifting to get comfortable on the metal truck bed while purposefully putting my legs up the other way so that Hunter and Dennis each had to sit on the other side, beside each other.

The truck started up a second after Ethan closed his door, and Dennis asked, "So you seriously have no interest in driving?"

"I guess I did before," I offered with another shrug. "But like I said, it doesn't seem to be that special anymore. Take right now for instance. We're gonna pull out of this lot, wait through a line of cars to turn right, wait at the intersection to turn right again, drive two blocks, then make another right. If I was by myself, I could put a line on the roof of the PRT building and slingshot myself above the roof, then use another line on the roof of the church two blocks over to tug me that way. Trust me, a car is a downgrade from this kind of convenience."

Hunter was typing something out on her pad. After a moment, the voice spoke up with, "You don't have to put on a mask to drive. Unless you're the getaway driver for a bank job."

"Girl's got a point there." Dennis nudged Hunter, and I saw her blush and look away. "If you had a car you could get around without changing into your costume all the time."

I considered for a moment before biting my lip to stop the Tattletale smile that tried to come. "I guess you might be right..." I trailed off purposefully, not wanting to push too hard or fast.

Dennis squinted at me, clearly suspecting a joke or something. "Yeah? So you wanna learn to drive?"

I hemmed and hawed for a few moments, shifting a little before looking toward Hunter as if it had just occurred to me to ask, "You think I should?"

The other girl blinked at the question, then nodded slowly and gave me a thumbs up of agreement.

I'd never been fishing, but I imagined this was a bit like that. I had my bait out there and just had to carefully let them bite without realizing what I was doing. To that end, I pretended to think about it a little more, purposefully drawing it out as if I didn't already know exactly what I was going for. "Well... maybe if I could learn from someone that I knew..." I trailed off again, feigning uncertainty. Then I gave a soft gasp as if something had just barely occurred to me and looked up. "Dennis, you could do it. You could teach me how to drive, right?"

The question clearly surprised the red-haired boy, because he stared at me for a second. "Err, you want me to teach you? I mean, I guess that could work."

I let my head bob eagerly. "Sure, we haven't spent as much time together since you turned traitor."

"I didn't turn traitor!" He sputtered. "I turned eighteen! It happens to everybody!"

"Right," I waved a hand dismissively. "Like I said, turned traitor. Anyway, it'd be an excuse to hang out. So what do you say, teach me?"

He looked uncertain for a moment, but finally shrugged and nodded. "Sure, if that's what you want."

"Great." I smiled and leaned back, watching the cars behind us as the truck turned the corner. I counted to twenty in my head, then straightened as if a thought had just come to me. "Err, hey Hunter, you said you were in the Birdcage for... what was it, three years?"

She blanched before giving a hesitant nod. Obviously that hadn't exactly brought up happy memories.

"So... do you know how to drive?" Again, I was careful to make it sound like this had just now occurred to me. "I mean, since you were away for so long."

Hunter looked confused by the question, but shook her head after a moment.

I smiled broadly. "Well hey, that's okay. That just means that I can have some company. Dennis can teach both of us." I looked back and forth between them, eyes bright with enthusiasm. "We'll probably both learn better by having someone else to watch too, _**and**_ it's still just people in the know about who we are. See how well that works?"

Dennis clearly knew I was doing _something_, but couldn't work out exactly what my angle was. Because he was oblivious about this sort of thing. "I guess so, if both of you wanna learn."

"Perfect." I smiled a little more, letting my head lean back as I gazed up at the sky. "Just perfect."

Once we reached the store, the three of us hopped down to join Ethan and Marissa. I took a second to grab my girlfriend's hand and smiled with satisfaction.

"You are a little meddler." She whispered to me, giving my hand a squeeze while nodding toward Hunter and Dennis.

"I object to that." I whispered back. "I'm a great honking huge meddler."

Ethan came around the front of the truck, stretching out as he moved. "Okay, Mika's parents are probably already waiting, so let's try to split up and get all the stuff we need for the barbeque asap. We've gotta have... the meat, the buns and condiments, and the chips, salsa, and drinks. Who wants to get what?"

Before anyone else could speak up, I interrupted. "Well, Mars and I can get the meat." Smoothly and without even looking at him, I added, "Shut _up, _Dennis. So Ethan should probably get the buns and condiments since there's less of those. Which leaves chips, salsa, and drinks for you guys." I nodded toward Hunter and Dennis, the former of which was currently staring rather intently at her shoes while her face turned pink.

Oblivious Dennis just shrugged. "Works for me. You good with putting up with me a bit longer, Hunter?"

She nodded, and it was settled. Marissa and I headed in to grab a cart, then moved for the back of the store. Mars was shaking her head at me. "You're right, you **are** a great honking huge meddler."

I made a disparaging noise. "They just need a little push together, that's all. She likes him and he likes her, but he thinks she isn't interested and she thinks her power means she isn't allowed to be happy. I'm just giving them a nudge."

Before she could respond to that, I recognized two of the three people that we were passing on our way into the store. My eyes widened and I very nearly spun on my heel before murmuring to the girl beside me. "Keep going, I'll meet you inside."

Then I hurriedly pivoted and headed out after the three girls I'd seen while hissing, "Amy, Riley?"

Both girls were obviously dressed in a way to avoid attention. Amy wore simple blue jeans and a featureless gray sweatshirt, and a baseball cap jammed down over her brown frizzy hair. Riley, beside her, wore identical jeans, and a green sweatshirt with the hood up. Her hair had been dyed black, and she was either wearing contacts or Panacea had altered her eyes, because they were a totally different color from normal as well.

On my wrist, Jalopy played a few notes of the Beach Boys 'Mama Says', shifting just far enough out of his wristband form to wave his two grappler arms at Riley, like a little kid trying to get his parent's attention.

"Teth—I mean, Madison!" The diminutive bio-tinker all-but bounced up to me, eyes shining. "I didn't know you were gonna meet us here!" I had given up on keeping my identity secret from her, figuring that since Amy, Dinah, Emma, _**and**_ Pandora knew who I was, keeping Riley in the dark might just do more harm than good if she decided that I still didn't trust her or was treating her unfairly.

"She wasn't." Amy put in. "Was she?" Her eyes were squinting around, as if she was afraid a whole team of PRT officers was about to drop in on them.

I shook my head. "Just here to get barbeque stuff. What..." I frowned at the their companion, a dark skinned girl who looked utterly unfamiliar. "Pandora?" I asked with a lower voice.

"We are disguised, Tether-Friend." She replied, brightly and honestly.

I winced, looking around. Luckily, nobody was nearby. "It's just Madison when I'm not in costume, you know. What are you guys... doing here?" I squinted at the cart full of what looked like several cows worth of meat.

"Oh, just needed... you know... some more material to work with." Amy replied evasively before clearing her throat. She was kind of shit at keeping secrets subtly, and obviously knew it because she flinched. "It's nothing bad. Just... we'll talk about it later, okay?" The poor girl was holding onto that cart like I was going to yank it away from her.

"Oookay." I shrugged. "I don't know what you guys need with all that meat, but... good luck?"

Riley just had to give me a hug, and actually gave Jalopy a tickle against his sensor. Then they left, heading for a car that I didn't recognize.

Mars moved up behind me, staring after them. "Was that Panacea, Pandora, and Riley all carrying a metric crap ton of meat out of the store?"

"Yup." I nodded.

"Are you as terrified as I am at the thought of what they might be doing with it?"

"Ayup."

**18.03**

"Seriously, does anyone else find the idea of starting the school year in the middle of the week to be a little weird?" I asked my companions as we stood on the sidewalk in front of Arcadia High School the next day. "Wouldn't it be better to start it on a Monday instead of Wednesday?"

Chris, standing a little to the left, shrugged. "I'm still advocating 'no school at all', so don't look at me."

The other members of our little group were Lily, Cassie, Theo, and Amy. Mika and Missy were both still in middle school, going into the sixth and eighth grades, respectively. It still boggled my mind that girls as young as them could end up with powers as strong as theirs were. Missy had been slightly younger than Mika when she first got her powers and joined the Wards, and now she was pretty much a three year veteran. The fact that most capes triggered around age fifteen or sixteen and thus graduated within a couple years meant that she actually had more experience than anyone else currently on the team. Yet she was still in middle school. Meanwhile, Mika was already being groomed as the potential next coming of Eidolon, considering her ability to vary her powers from week to week. It was crazy.

Theo spoke up a little hesitantly. "I uhh, I think they do it that way so that you have a couple days of school for people to get settled into the new year, then a weekend to take a break, and then start fresh with a full week of classes where the teachers have already done their introductions."

Lily was being quiet, watching the school almost apprehensively. I felt bad for her. Apparently the fact that she had no parents or other family meant that the PRT didn't see a problem with moving her around a lot, to wherever they needed her most. And now they expected her to jump in and take over leadership for this team, after we'd just had one leader move, another leader graduate, and a third leader die, all in the course of the same couple of months. She had to deal with a new town, a new school, a new team, and try to lead that team despite never having been a leader before.

Reaching up, I patted her on the back. "I guess Theo's got a point. We should head in anyway, and get this over with."

Cassie was shaking her head sadly. "See, it's that kind of attitude that's leading to the disintegration of the American Education system. We have the internet. Do you have any idea what that's done to people's ability to become educated if they actually want to? We should be fucking _**grateful**_ that we get to go to school in a time that it's so easy to learn."

I blinked a couple times, tilting my head at her. "You're... not being sarcastic, are you?"

She just stared at me for a second. "Why would I be sarcastic about school? You can learn stuff in five seconds that used to require an hour long trip to the library to hunt through the reference section. Now, you can just do a search and find it five seconds without even leaving the couch."

I held both hands up placatingly. "No, no. I get it. I just... I'm still amused that under all that..." I gestured to the black leather jacket, ratty jeans, and combat boots that she wore. "... you're a total nerd."

Cassie's eyes rolled and she gave me a shove. "Just because I like to learn things doesn't mean I can't still kick your god damn ass up and down this street if you call me a nerd again."

Amy, who had been pretty quiet this whole time, heaved a sigh and started to walk to the doors without saying anything else. The rest of us exchanged looks and then began to follow.

I knew what was bothering Amy, of course. Coming back to this school without Victoria was obviously horrible for her. Even before taking the depth of Amy's feelings for her adopted sister into account, the two had been all but inseparable for the longest time. From what the others had said, Amy was more of Victoria's shadow, an omnipresent figure that came along for everything that Victoria did.

Now, she was being forced to stand alone in the spotlight. New Wave was disbanded, and as far as Arcadia was concerned, Amy was all that was left of what had been a collection of celebrities for them to gawk at over the years. They'd had Crystal, Eric, Victoria, and Amy at different points. All that was left to hold their attention was Amy, who, unlike the others, wilted under the spotlight rather than thriving in it.

And every raised eyebrow, every hushed whisper, every stopped conversation that accompanied Amy's entrance into the school was just another reminder that Victoria was gone.

I had never hated New Wave's decision to unmask more than I did in that very moment.

I had been in Arcadia before. Not to attend classes, but one of my spare costumes was stored there alongside those of the other Wards, so I'd been in and out of the building enough to basically know my way around at least somewhat.

Even so, the differences between this place and Winslow were transparent. Arcadia was _clean_ and modern. There was plenty of glass and white tile that made the whole place look pristine compared to the crappy little poor school that I'd gone to for the first couple years of my high school career.

Amy and Lily were seniors, while Cassie and Chris were sophomores. That left Theo and me as the only juniors in our little high school aged group. When the others left us behind, I glanced at the schedule once again, even though I'd already read it. "American History with Mr. Egelbert, in room one twenty. I think it's..." I turned in a circle, passing my finger around before starting to point one way. "This..." I trailed off as Theo silently reached up and moved my hand a completely different direction. "This way." Okay, so maybe going in and out of the school after hours to get my costume wasn't exactly the best method of learning my way around the place after all.

We walked together, and I studied Theo for a moment. He'd filled out a bit more since joining the team. He still looked a bit on the heavier side, but I knew that his pudginess had become almost all muscle. Yet he was still withdrawn and obviously not very confident in either his abilities or his own opinions. "So, ahh, is everything all right? You seem quiet. Even quieter than usual, I mean."

He blanched a little at that, nodding quickly. "Everything's fine. It's just..." Theo trailed off, obviously reluctant to talk about it, but he finally murmured, "It would've been dad's birthday this week."

My eyes widened. His dad, as in Kaiser. "I... uhh... wow. Sorry, Theo. I didn't know."

Shrugging slightly, the boy started to walk. "He wasn't a very good dad. And he was a worse human being. He was a murderer and a crazy racist."

"But he was still your dad." I said quietly as I moved to keep up with him.

A frown knitted the boy's forehead. "Barely," he acknowledged with a little sigh. "We weren't close."

"You wanted to be, though." I guessed. "You tried to make him proud of you."

Theo glanced at me, his face a little pale. "I didn't... I didn't want him to think I was like him. I never thought of... of people the way he thought of them. Especially the different races."

I amended myself. "What I mean is, you wanted a dad who would be proud of you."

He was silent for almost half of our walk to the classroom, before admitting in a quiet voice, "It's more that I wanted a dad that _**I**_ could be proud of. A dad that wasn't... him. And now that he's gone, I feel..."

"Guilty." I realized. "You feel guilty because you didn't... what, love him enough?"

"Because I was glad that he was dead." Theo's voice was barely a whisper. "I was glad he was gone and I could just live with Kayden and Aster and Cassie without... without him around. Even when Kayden linked up with Coil, I knew that they were going to hurt my dad. I knew that Coil and he were enemies, but I didn't feel... anything like loyalty to him. I was glad we were leaving. Then he was dead, and I knew that it was because of something Kayden did, and I was even kind of glad then. I was glad my father was gone, because at least we could be a family without him around. And... it never really hit me until this week that he was _**my father**_, and I'll never talk to him again. Maybe he never would have changed, but now we'll never know."

There was dampness in Theo's eyes, that he blinked away rapidly. "Stupid," he muttered. "Grieving months after it happens.  
>"No, Theo." I said quietly. "It's not stupid. I... I'm sorry you never had the chance to have the relationship with your father that you wanted to have. I'm not sorry that Kaiser's dead, but I'm sorry you lost any chance to have a real dad."<p>

He gave me a small smile, and let out a breath. "You're easy to talk to. It makes me feel... like I _**should**_ talk to you, like it's the right thing to do. It's almost like when I'm tinkering. It just makes sense to tell you what my problems are."

Glaistig Uaine's words about me being some kind of 'true healer' came back to me, and I swallowed. "Any time you wanna talk, Theo, about anything, I'll be around." He nodded, and the two of us walked into the classroom together while I added, "But for now, let's see what this Mr. Egelbert is like."

About thirty seconds later, as I sat next to Theo in the middle of the classroom, I spoke in a low voice. "I have to admit, this was not what I expected."

The person at the whiteboard, who currently seemed to be completely ignoring everyone who came into the classroom, was most decidedly _**not**_ a mister anything, Egelbert or otherwise. **She** was, rather, an attractive woman with black, slightly wavy hair that fell just a little past her shoulders, in a perfectly tailored black suit who looked like she belonged pretty much anywhere but in a high school history classroom.

Students, a few of whom I recognized from Winslow, but most of whom I had never seen before, were murmuring about the unexpected sight. Obviously, they didn't know what was going on either. The one boy who paused to ask the woman in the suit what she was doing received no vocal answer, but she did look at the boy and whatever expression he saw made him hurriedly backpedal to get to a desk.

The talking continued for another minute and a half, before the woman abruptly and without looking anywhere near a clock spoke a single word. "Quiet." Half an instant after she finished speaking the word, a buzzer announced the start of the class period.

One of the boys near the door kept talking for another few seconds, finishing his conversation. As he spoke, the woman in the suit simply walked to his desk. She reached into the inside pocket of her jacket, and I had the weird, briefly panicked thought that she was reaching for a pistol. Instead, she withdrew what looked like a black ruler and slapped it down hard against the desk. Everyone, especially the boy that had been talking, jumped at the bang.

"This," the woman held the black ruler up. "Is a strike. Mr. Callis here has just earned one for this class period." She laid the ruler down on his desk. "Do not touch or move it, Mr. Callis. For every strike a class earns, everyone in that class will do a five hundred word essay on a subject to be chosen at the end of that period. Earn two strikes and it is a thousand words. Three strikes and it will be one point five thousand words. I have as many of them as I need."

Dead silence met her words, and the woman plucked up the black ruler, putting it away. "That will apply from this point_forward_. I will not apply the penalty this time. In the future, when I ask for quiet, you will give it. Is that understood, Mr. Callis?"

He nodded almost frantically, and she walked away from him toward the white board. Taking up the marker there, she wrote, 'Ms. Fortune' and tapped it once. "This is my name. I am your... substitute." Her nose wrinkled a little at the end, giving me the distinct impression that she wasn't exactly happy about being here.

A student in the back raised her hand, and Ms. Fortune frowned slightly before giving a faint nod. The girl shifted a little in her seat before asking, "Where's Mr. Egelbert?"

Ms. Fortune glanced, of all places, toward me before responding. "Mr. Egelbert has become... ill. With any luck, he will return in short time. For now, I have been... asked to take over."

"So... let's start learning our history, shall we?"

A couple days later, I was having my monthly visit to the Birdcage.

"Anyway, Sparrow's parents are pretty cool. I mean, they were willing to move all the way down to Brockton Bay just to help their daughter."

Trevor took a bite of the Snickers bar that I'd brought him (after it had been thoroughly scanned to make sure it contained nothing potentially hazardous to bring into the Birdcage) and shrugged. "Well, they didn't really have much of a town to go back to, did they?"

I squinted at him. "There's still a difference between moving to a new town because yours is quarantined, and moving to a whole new state."

"True. What about the other people in the town that got fucked over?"

Sighing, I glanced away, looking around the small prison cell that functioned as Trevor's room. "That whole place had to be relocated, which was about twenty thousand people. So they're basically transplanting the entire population to a new town about a hundred miles away and calling it the same thing."

"Jeeze, even I can see why people would object to that." He made a face and leaned back against the wall. "How're they building a town so fast?"

"They're not, actually." I managed a weak little smile. "There was a Navy base or something that got closed down a couple years ago out there. They had housing for the military families. Just a bunch of empty houses and buildings that needed some touch up. Tinker work did the rest to get the place functional again."

"So you're saying that Sparrow's parents chose to miss out on the joys of living in dusty military housing? However could they resist that kind of temptation?"

"See?" I nodded to him. "I keep telling people that I didn't get the only sarcasm gene in the family."

He smiled very faintly, before sighing as he asked carefully, "So the people you're living with, do they know about your... job?"

I managed to keep my face blank. I hadn't told Trevor the truth about Ethan and Sam, obviously. It wasn't my secret to tell. As far as he knew, they were just people that the PRT had assigned me to. "Yeah, they're in on it. Makes it easier for me to get around."

We sat quietly for a few moments, both of us thinking about the reason I _needed _other guardians. Finally, Trevor broke the silence. "I guess you're lucky in a way. If I hadn't been... gone, you might've had to live with me or something." His face twisted a little. "Then you'd be really screwed up." He let out a low sigh. "If you say these O'Connell people are uhhh... are good for you, then I'm glad."

I changed the subject, nodding at the TV in the corner. "Looks like you've got a few comforts in here."

He shrugged. "Yeah, turns out being someone that the Faerie Queen wants to be protected tends to get a treat here and there."

I winced. "Tell me you're not taking advantage of that? Because some of these people don't have a lot of impulse control, and they might not consider the penalty of taking it out on you. Sure, Glaistig Uaine would probably suck their soul out through a straw and make their empty husk of a body perform show tunes for the enjoyment of the other prisoners, but that wouldn't really do you a lot of good."

His head shook rapidly at that. "No way. No. I told you, I learned my lesson about that sort of thing. It was her idea to have that put in here, actually. She said that the more I stay out out of sight, the less it upsets the sleepers or something. I dunno. But I try to take her advice, as long as I can understand it."

I lifted up the backpack I'd brought. "Got more text books for you. You got those assignments that Dragon sent in?" Trevor was taking a sort of accelerated long distance college course, so that he wouldn't just be sitting around constantly while he was in here.

"Yeah." He leaned back toward the cot and retrieved a pile of papers, passing them to me. "Dragon really knows her stuff. I know she's a tinker and everything, but she's either got a bunch of different professors working for her without knowing who they're testing, or she's gotta have like... fifteen different degrees."

I didn't know much about the woman known as Dragon, except that she was considered one of the best tinkers in the world, and she never left her home. She had some severe form of agoraphobia or something, so all the 'Dragon' suits we saw were actually remotely piloted.

"Maybe she does have all those degrees," I offered with a shrug. "I mean, look at this place she built. There's capes that don't have to sleep. Maybe Dragon's one of them. That combined with the fact that she doesn't go outside, that could give her a lot of time to study."

"I guess so." He was quiet for a moment before swallowing. "I'm glad you're doing okay. I saw the news about the... the new Endbringer, and it made me... it made me worry about you."

This was awkward. We hadn't really been all that close for several years, and then everything else had happened with Teacher. Now... we were slowly rebuilding some kind of relationship.

"I'm okay." I looked away for a second. "I just wish we'd figured out some way of killing the damn thing. Or... at least one of them. We've gotta kill _**one**_ of these monsters, or people are just gonna... give up. They're gonna think it's not worth bringing people into a world like this, a world where Endbringers just keep multiplying."

"You guys'll figure it out," he offered, a little weakly. "I mean, you get more capes all the time. Even most of the _villains_ want to stop the Endbringers. Something'll happen."

I smiled at that. "I hope so. Hell, for all I know, Dinah's thinking of recruiting one of them, given her track record." His eyes widened and he opened his mouth to question it, but I shook him off. "Never mind. I'm kidding. Mostly. I really hope."

We visited a little more, before I finally stood up. "I'll come back and say goodbye in a few hours, whenever I'm done with the Faerie Queen."

Nodding, Trevor started to lean in for a hug, stopped partway to offer his hand instead, and then did a sort of awkward half-hug thing that made us both confused and uncomfortable. It was something though. I'd try to just give him a full hug before I left.

"Wish me luck?"

He shrugged. "She likes you. I think you wore out every last bit of luck you were ever gonna get pulling that off."

I rolled my eyes at that and then turned to head out of the cell.

Time for a one-on-one bonding session with Glaistig Uaine.

**18.04**

The Faerie Queen was waiting for me in what was apparently her own private... throne room was my best guess. It was a room about a third of the size of the regular cell block, which meant that for a single person it was enormous. Dragon had mentioned that it used to be a small library meant to provide a few comforts (soft chairs, ambient music, gentle lighting, etc) for prisoners. All the cell blocks had them, but most had long-since been cannibalized, the various comforts and materials stolen by different prisoners and taken as trophies back to their own cells. Now Dragon simply sent new books directly to each cell block with the other supplies and let the prisoners themselves figure out how to divvy them up.

But where the other cell block libraries were stripped bare, this one still seemed rather... pleasant for what it was. The floor wasn't carpet, but it was soft enough to almost fool someone into thinking it was if they weren't looking at it. The book shelves had been moved to either side to form a wide corridor from that led through the room, with the shelves themselves standing almost as silent guardians and onlookers toward that one single spot at the opposite end of the room that was lit by carefully angled lamps.

Glaistig Uaine was there, sitting on what in the real world would be a simple reclining armchair. In this place, it was a throne. One of her shades, a little girl, was dancing in a circle a little bit to the left of the throne. As she twirled, I could almost hear the Ring Around The Rosie song instead of the classical violin music that was playing from the nearby speakers.

"_Healer_." The Faerie Queen straightened in her seat, waving a hand to direct me toward a comfortable straight-back armchair. "_The visit with your mortal sibling has gone well_." It wasn't a question.

"Well enough, your Highness." I agreed after a moment, taking the offered seat. "Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to talk with my brother before our visit."

"_It is important to maintain relationships with those who shape us._" Glaistig Uaine's chorus of voices informed me quietly, while the ghost-figure of the little girl began to play hopscotch nearby. "_Particularly those of us who will require those anchors when the beginning ends." _

Without thinking, I asked, "You mean when the end begins?"

Her eyes turned briefly sharp behind her make-shift veil. "_Do not presume to correct my words, Healer. I do not misspeak." _

Cursing myself inwardly, I winced. "My apologies, your Highness. I meant no offense." She seemed to accept that with a cursory nod, and I waited another moment before asking, "May I ask how you and your people are doing since everything happened?"

The deceptively young-looking villain gazed at me briefly, apparently considering my question before she responded. "_The sleepers are restless. They seek conflict to further their purpose, and becoming trapped within an inescapable gulag once forced their attentions to one another. With the departure of those few, what was once deemed impossible has potential once again, and those that had abandoned thoughts of escape have once again begun to turn their minds toward that potential_."

It took me a second to work my way through that. "You're saying that before Lung and Marquis and their people escaped, everyone in here was resigned to being trapped forever. But now that one escape has happened, some of the prisoners think it could happen again." Then I blinked, realizing something. "And that's bad for you, because certain people who would be fighting are working together instead, because they have hope of getting out of this place. So there's less people killing each other and providing you with more shades?"

Her eyes, so much older than the rest of her seemed, watched me for a few seconds in silence before speaking again. "_I go where I am needed, where they call me to be. I go where His children dwell, to lift them from their fall, and ready them for His return."_

"I'm sorry, I don't understand," I confessed. "You ready them for whose return? Who's coming?"

I thought I saw her smile faintly. "_He is already here, and He will return when we have finished and She is once again." _

She went silent again, and I blinked a couple times. "He's already here... but He still has to return, and He won't return until She is... something?"

"_She is half of all, and when She is again, He will return and We will be. Once all is done." _

Needless to say, I was pretty much completely lost. I had no idea who He or She were, and I wasn't following this 'return/is/will be' stuff. But I knew that it made sense to the Faerie Queen, and that whatever it was she was trying to explain, I was only missing a tiny bit of extremely important information to make it all clear. The trouble was, I had no idea how to go about getting that little bit of crucial data to fill in the blanks.

For Glaistig Uaine, it must have been like trying to explain what salt tasted like to someone who had never tried it. There wasn't an adequate point of reference that she could give me.

Thankfully, she pressed on before I had to try to come up with a response. "_Perhaps you would like to hear the tale of the Sleepers, so that our history may be preserved._" When I nodded, she lifted a hand to point to the nearest row of book shelves that lined the path leading from the entrance to her throne.

At her gesture, the three rows of book cases lifted from the ground and separated to either side, forming a new path toward the far wall. From where we were sitting, I could see that the metal wall had numerous scratches all over it, white marks against the dull gray.

The Faerie Queen made another gesture, and the lights in the room dimmed until we were sitting in near-total darkness. Her voices carried smoothly through the caliginous space.

"_The Kingdom of the Fae..." _On the wall ahead of us, some of the scratch-lines began to glow, becoming a rather beautiful outline of a palace towering high on a hill that itself stood over a surrounding village. "_Its power and strength was to all of humanity as they are to the ants within their burrows. To the ant, what they have constructed is great and wondrous. So too do the accomplishments of humanity pale in the face of the Fae at their height." _

I stayed quiet, staring at the glowing scene, which faded before my eyes. Different lines on the wall began to brighten then, changing the picture on the wall to look like pristine and glorious knights battling various monsters, all of which fell before them. "_The Fae spread their power to all lands, destroying those who thought to stand against their progress, and bringing light and reason to those who would accept it._" At the end of that, the scene changed to show the glowing knights offering books and food to obviously impoverished, starving peasants.

"_One by one their enemies fell, and the Fae, having consolidated their strength, were able to grow beyond even what they had been at their previous power, which itself dwarfed __**anything**__ humanity has dared to dream." _On the wall, the scene changed to show a single knight standing with his sword outstretched. Before my eyes, a trick of the glowing lines made it look as though the man had floated up and off the ground he had been standing on, while majestic wings grew into place and expanded behind him. The knight had become an angel.

"_Now the Fae were free to spread their great civilization throughout all that exists." _All of the lines went out then, while she continued to speak. "_Yet... not every enemy of civilization had truly been conquered. The Fae found, as they spread through all lands, that one... great... threat remained." _

Lines on the wall slowly began to glow, faint at first. I saw what looked like a mountain, before an **abrupt** blaze of light made me shield my eyes briefly. When I looked, the top of the mountain had been blown away, and the lights glowing at various intensities illustrated a flow of lava spreading down what remained of the mountain.

"_The Fae turned their power toward this threat." _Various hovering figures with wings appeared in the wall picture, clearly attacking the flowing lava. "_Yet for all of their great and unimagined power, this threat could not be contained. It was inevitable, a death that not even these people, as far beyond humanity's comprehension as humanity itself is beyond the worms inching their way through the dirt beneath their feet, could prevent or even slow. It was a... __**different**__ threat, and for all of their majestic power, the Fae had long-since grown beyond adaptation. Their paths had been set, their knowledge and methods established for as many millennia as humanity has had days. Changing those methods, altering their beings to confront this new threat that they did not understand was... impossible. This was an enemy for which they had no ready answer, and they had long since surpassed the point where they were able to imagine new answers."_

On the wall, the glowing lava looked like it was spreading over various villages. "_The enemy was inescapable, its approach inevitable. Yet the Fae were at a loss. Their great civilization had no solution, and it appeared as though all would be lost. They knew the enemy, and that it would destroy all that it saw. Yet they could not prevent it, not as they had become." _

The image changed to show three of the angel-figures floating in the air while she continued to narrate. "_Surely, somewhere within all the power they had gathered, the answer to this problem, the ability to slay this beast, existed. The proper method of saving their great civilization must have been within their grasp, if only they could find it." _

"_Clearly what they lacked was not the ability to prevent this monster from destroying them all, but the exact method of using that ability. A plan was made. They would spread what remained of their great civilization to as many lands as they could reach. Somewhere, someone surely would possess the exact mindset that was needed to slay this beast. They would share their strength among all races, working together to find the proper solution. Yet to do that, the Fae were forced to change themselves, to become even more than they had been."_

On the wall, the image became a single angel once again, which broke apart into dozens of tiny lights that all flew away in different directions.

"_They cast their civilization, their Sleepers, throughout the races, and sought the answers that they themselves had failed to discover."_

The Faerie Queen fell silent for several long seconds, and I finally asked, "The... these Fae, you th—I mean..." I stopped myself from saying 'you think'. "They're trying to kill a monster? Like... an Endbringer? They're trying to kill an Endbringer?" Maybe that was it. Maybe Fae was just another word for parahumans, who she saw as beyond normal humans, and the unstoppable monster was the Endbringers that we just couldn't manage to destroy.

Yet, as the lights in the room returned so that I could see again, her head shook. "_It brings no end, just as you do not bring what you are. You simply exist, and that is what you will be. It... is the End itself, and the solution has not yet been found, even as its influence grows with each passing moment. The answer __**must **__be discovered, no matter the cost, for what is the life of one compared to a million, and what are the lives of a billion compared to a trillion, and what are the lives of a trillion, compared to as many lives as there are grains of sand upon every beach on every world that will ever exist? The Fae must continue their search." _

I sat quietly for a few moments, trying to think. I was sure that there was just... something that seemed small, some kind of_**key**_ that would decrypt what she was saying and make it all make perfect sense. Yet for the life of me, I couldn't find that single bit of information.

It was crazy. I should be dismissing what she said as nothing more than gibberish. Fae? As many lives as there were grains of sand on every world? That wasn't even possible. It was ridiculous. She was psychotic, trying to justify her murders by applying some kind of grand quest to them.

She seemed to be waiting for a response though, so I offered, rather hesitantly, "That's... a lot to take in." I'd already known that she believed that Parahuman abilities were actually gifted by Fae, but to hear her explain it the way that she did... it clicked somehow in my head. Not perfect, but it was like... having a key that fit into a lock, yet didn't quite turn. Something about what she was explaining fit, just... not perfectly.

That or I was just going completely crazy. That was far more likely. Honestly, Fae civilization?

For some reason, Glaistig Uaine smiled faintly. "_You need not understand yet. Perhaps not for a very long time. Yet the time will come when what I've said will make sense, and you will have a choice that you must make." _

I hesitated before asking, "What kind of choice?"

"_The choice between the continuance of a civilization as vast and perfect as any that has ever existed, or that of the ants which burrow beneath their feet." _

"And this has something to do with... that... She and He you were talking about? What do they have to do with these Fae and the monster?"

I could have sworn she chuckled, barely audibly. "_They have everything to do with it, as you will find in time." _

My mouth opened to respond to that, but she held her hand up to stop me. "_I believe that is enough for now. One can only be expected to learn so much in a single afternoon. But for now, the subject I wish to speak on concerns this... Pandora." _

My eyes widened at that. "Err, what... uhh, what did you want to discuss about Pandora?"

"_Her maker. I would have you... tell me all that you know... about her maker. " _

Noelle. I hesitated, gathering my thoughts. What could I say? What could I actually tell her?

The truth. It had to be only the truth. No lies. Any lie or misinformation would probably mean the end of our deal, the end of her patience with me. She'd asked about Noelle, and I had to tell her everything that I knew.

Swallowing, I started to explain. "There were these... teenagers that lived on another world, a world like ours, except they only have a couple real superheroes. Anyway, the Simurgh attacked their city..."

"I still can't believe that you spent the day with you-know-who yesterday, and now you're just sitting in school like that was all normal."

I shrugged at Lily, who sat across from me in the lunch room the day after my visit with Glaistig Uaine. Cassie was beside me while Theo sat next to Lily. Amy was on the other side of me, and Chris sat on the other side of Lily, across from Amy. "How am I supposed to act? I don't think the school takes 'I spent the day in the-" I lowered my voice to a whisper. "-in the Birdcage' as a valid excuse to miss classes."

"Still..." Lily took a bite of her salad. "I'm glad she's not interested in me." Giving a little shudder at the thought, she added, "No offense or anything. I just... prefer not to have _**that**_ kind of attention."

"At least she still has a mask she can wear." Amy murmured, not seeming to realize that she had spoke aloud for a moment. When she did, her eyes widened as she looked to me. "O-oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Madison. I didn't mean it like... I didn't mean..."

"It's okay." I assured her. "I get what you mean. I can turn off being the one that everyone stares at and expects things from. You can't. Trust me, I know."

The bell went off, announcing the end of the lunch period. We picked ourselves up, collecting our trays and starting to head for the garbage cans, when Amy caught my arm. "Can I talk to you for just a sec?"

Glancing to the others, I waved them on and then leaned against the table. "Sure, Amy. What's up?"

"I..." She trailed off, looking around furtively, looking for all the world like a squirrel that was petrified that someone was going to take its nuts away. "I wanted... to ask for your help with something, but no one can know about it. They'll try to stop us."

"Us?" I echoed. "You mean you and me?"

Her head shook. "You, me, and Panda."

"Oh, you're calling her Panda now too, huh?" I managed a little weakly, letting out a breath before frowning. "What... do you need help with that others would try to stop you and Pandora from doing?"

"We want to visit... our father," she admitted in a very soft voice. "I have to ask him... I mean... we have to ask him... something only he can answer."

I almost choked on her words. "Your father? What... what could you possibly want to ask him?"

She met my gaze for a second before responding. "We want to ask him... who our mother was. Please, Madison. Help me talk to my father so we can find out where I... we... come from, who our family is."

I opened my mouth and then immediately shut it, letting out a low, long sigh before nodding weakly.

"Okay. I'll help you guys talk to your father."

**18.05**

I had expected it to take some time to find some way of contacting Marquis and working out an arrangement to meet with him somewhere neutral and safe. After all, it wasn't like he was advertising his location for the Protectorate to come and pick him up.

Clearly I had underestimated Pandora and Amy, because the latter stopped by my locker the next morning before classes started, leaning in to whisper, "We're supposed to meet you-know-who tonight. You'll come, right? I tried to time it for when you didn't have patrol."

I turned slightly, blinking at her. "Tonight? You already managed to contact him?"

She blanched a little at the question. "Actually, he already contacted me awhile ago. Somehow he sent me a message to my private e-mail the day after he broke out. I just didn't respond to it until last night."

After a momentary hesitation, I asked, "Did you tell anyone that he contacted you?"

"Of course I did. They said they expected him to, but I shouldn't engage with him. I gave them the details, but it was sent from a public computer, so they couldn't really do anything with it."

"And you sent a message last night about wanting to meet up?"

Amy gave a quick little nod, glancing around nervously. The girl would have made a horrible spy. "Y-yeah. He sent a message back two minutes later with a location."

"Where does he wanna meet?"

After biting her lip and giving another furtive look around, Amy pressed a folded up piece of paper into my hand. "Here's the details. Thank you. I..." Her face blanched a little bit. "I don't have a lot of people I could ask to come with for this. Not since..."

Seeing the look on her face and knowing what she was thinking, I put a hand up on her arm. "I get it. It's okay, Amy. Don't worry, we'll... talk to him and find out the truth. But you have to be careful. _**We**_ have to be careful." I hesitated a little bit before asking more quietly, "Does he know about Pandora?"

She shook her head quickly at that. "No. I mean, I don't think so. But she wants to meet him, and... and I don't want to lie to her about it. If I'm meeting him, she deserves to. I... I won't hide things from her or treat her differently just because of where she came from. I... can't do that to someone else."

I still wasn't sure about letting someone like Marquis know about Pandora's existence, but Amy had a point. Lying to Pandora about it, or purposefully treating her differently, was just going to end badly. So, rather than argue the point, I just nodded before opening the paper that she had given me to see the address. "You know where this place is?"

"Yeah, Pandora checked it out last night. It's that old rental car place up past the elementary school on Orchard. You know, the place that's been closed for like ten years or something? You think that's where all his people are holed up?"

I shook my head. "I don't think he'd give you a location like that for a first meeting. My guess is that was an easy place for them to clear out. He's gonna be ready in case it's a trick."

Leaning against the locker next to mine, Amy sighed softly. "I thought about it. He's a bad guy, and he deserves to be in prison. So do all the people that broke out with him. But I wanna know who my mother is first. But I'm not staying with him. That's another reason why I want you and Pandora there too. Just so he can't... force me to stay." Taking in a breath and then letting it out again, she looked up at me. "We're going there under a truce. But I'm going to tell him that I'm still helping the Protectorate bring him in. I... don't know how he'll react to that."

"Whatever way he reacts," I assured her. "We won't let him keep you against your will. But, we might want to at least bring a couple others in on this." When she opened her mouth to object, I quickly pressed on. "We might need backup, Amy. Backup that isn't Pandora, just in case.

She hesitated then, before asking carefully, "Who did you have in mind?"

"Hunter and Cassie." I said immediately. "He knows both of them, so he couldn't really object too much to more people being brought in to meet him.

Amy still looked uncertain, but after staring at me for a moment she finally nodded once. "Okay. But just them. I don't want a bunch of people to know about this."

"I promise. This won't turn into some big 'catch the bad guy' mission, Amy."

I smiled while reassuring her, while inwardly I just kept praying that this whole thing wouldn't completely blow up in our faces.

"This is sooo gonna blow up in our faces." Cassie announced hours later.

She and I were both in costume, standing on either side of Hunter on the edge of a rooftop down the street from where Marquis wanted to meet. Amy and two of the Pandoras, both of which were wearing their red half-masks while Amy herself was in casual civilian clothes, were talking in low voices further back on the roof.

"He seemed like the type to stick to the terms of a deal when we were in there," I pointed out cautiously. "If he agreed to just talk to Amy without hurting anybody, I think he'll keep his promise."

"He's not the one I'm worried about." She frowned, folding her arms. "It's all the guys he surrounds himself with. All we need is one of them to decide they want to grab Amy and have some kind of hold over their boss, and everything falls apart."

I shrugged. "They'd have to be pretty stupid to try that, considering Pandora and Hunter."

Snorting, Cassie glanced past Hunter to look at me. "I'm not saying they'd get away with it, just that they'd try it. And if they do, this situation could spiral out of control really fucking fast."

"We'll be okay. We just have to keep our eyes open." Part of me wanted to have the whole team involved in this, but I knew Amy was way too skittish about this whole thing to ever agree to that. This was the best I could do. "She's his daughter. I'm sure Marquis has thought of what kind of people he wants to have around her, which ones he trusts not to try anything and ruin his chance to talk with her."

That earned a nod of agreement from Hunter, before the other girl turned to look at Amy and Pandora. Her thumb moved over her computer pad, until its voice came. "Marquis will keep his people in line."

Before either of us could respond to that, the lights within the rental car building went on, then off, then on again in rapid succession. After ten tense seconds, the cycle repeated.

"There's the signal." I announced toward Amy and the Pandoras. "Time to go in."

Amy looked as nervous as I had ever seen her as she stood up and brushed herself off, with a Pandora standing on either side of her. "O-okay." She had to clear her throat, shifting from foot to foot anxiously. "Are we all going in together, or...?"

"All together." I nodded. "We'll try to convince Marquis that we're playing this straight, so he should. Besides, Oversight's still monitoring, isn't she?"

From Hunter's computer pad, Emma's voice emerged. "Yes, as long as you guys don't go any f-further than the rental car l-lot, I'll still be in range." The girl had set herself up somewhere else on the street. Only Pandora knew where she was, since one of her was there as well. "If anything goes w-wrong, I'll be ready."

The Pandora on Amy's left side announced, "If our father attempts to harm Amy-Sister, there will be no need for reinforcements. His existence will cease."

Amy winced a little at that, putting her hand on her clone's arm. "Easy, Zeta. We... we want to go in without a fight. He's going to tell us about my—I mean, our mother."

I blinked curiously at that. "You called her Zeta. Can you tell them apart?"

A faint smile touched the other girl's face. "I'm getting better at it. This is Zeta, and this..." She gestured to the one on her right side. "Is either Xi or Omicron."

"Our sister is correct. This iteration is known as Omicron," the Pandora in question announced.

Nodding at that, Amy gestured vaguely with a hand. "I knew it was one or the other. It's still kind of hard to tell because those two are pretty similar."

Cassie just stared at her. "They're all 'pretty similar.' They're clones."

Amy shrugged, still smiling faintly. "I think it's like twins. Spend enough time around them and you can start to tell them apart. That or it's a family thing. Or a clone thing. Or a parahuman superpower thing. There's a lot of things it could be, but the point is, I can tell them apart. The one with Oversight is Gamma."

I used lines to help myself, Amy, and Ruin to the ground. Cassie levitated herself down with her clothes, and both Pandoras simply dropped, one of them turning into a swarm of insects before impact while the other became a cloud of mist. Then the six of us made our way across the empty, rundown street toward the large, empty parking lot that had once, in better economic times, housed dozens of rental cars.

I recognized the single figure that met us at the gate, rolling it open as we approached. "Hey, Cinderhands." I purposefully tried to make my voice as casual as possible. "Long time no see."

"Hey, kid." He grunted the words before nodding toward Hunter. "See you got yourself a new group to play guard dog for. They treating you as well as the Faerie Queen did?"

Ruin responded with a simple nod, and the man turned to squint at the two masked figures standing on either side of Amy. "Boss said there'd be four people with his daughter. I'm counting five."

The Pandora on the left, Zeta apparently, spoke up. "If our numbers bother you-"

Omicron, on the right, continued in an identical voice. "We may always reduce them."

They touched hands, and both figures seemed to turn semi-liquid before merging into a single body which then stood slightly in front of Amy. "Is this better?"

The man's mouth dropped open briefly, before he shook his head and gave a little shudder. "Damn duplicators. Never gonna get used to them. Worse than shapeshifters."

I managed to restrain the urge to snicker at how little he knew, as Cinderhands pointed back toward the main building. "Boss is in there. We're keeping an ear on your comm traffic, so be smart and don't try to spring any traps."

"No traps." I assured him. "Amy just wants to see her father."

He grunted in reply and looked away, focusing on the road once more. After exchanging glances with the others, I started to walk with them to the brightly lit building.

Whimper was waiting at the building entrance. He gave us a brief once over, then reached back to open the door behind him and stood out of the way as we passed. Ruin went first in case it was a trap that required her power, then Reach, myself, Pandora, and finally, Amy.

I had expected the place to be dirty, judging from the outside. Instead, it was as pristine and spotless as a hospital was supposed to be. There wasn't a spec of dirt or a smudge anywhere in the room, which was lit by three different electric lanterns, most of which were set along the granite counter that had once served as the divider between customers and staff.

A single person stood on the other side of the otherwise empty room, next to the dividing counter and near a wooden door with 'Manager' stenciled on it. He wore a pair of black slacks with a red silk shirt and slightly darker red tie, all perfectly tailored, and probably more expensive than some cars.

"Marquis." I looked to the man, then back to Amy. "Your daughter wanted to meet you."

"You have my thanks." His voice sounded warm, before he focused on Hunter and Cassie. "It's a pleasure to see the two of you as well. I'm glad we have this opportunity before any unpleasantries transpired."

To that, Reach leaned closer to Ruin and stage-whispered, "He means before we had to come in and kick his and all his people's asses."

Marquis apparently didn't think that was worth disputing. He simply looked away from Cassie to focus on the two by the door. His eyes passed over the masked Pandora curiously. "Same height, build, eye color... hair color... a possible double should something have gone wrong?"

"Don't worry about her yet." Amy spoke up before Pandora could. I saw her press a hand against the clone's side briefly, apparently warning her to stay quiet for the moment. "I want to t-talk to you." Her voice cracked very slightly toward the end, but I could tell she was trying to stand firm.

"Of course, Amelia." Marquis gave a slight nod. "I've been hoping to visit with you for... quite some time."

"Don't call me that." She snapped quickly, a bit defensively. "You keep using that name in your messages, and it's not my name. My name is Amy."

"Amelia is the name you were given at birth," Marquis' response was patient, his noble bearing never diminishing. "Yet, if Amy is the name that you wish to use, I will accede to your request... Amy." He looked slightly uncomfortable with that, but he apparently thought that not upsetting Amy was more important than the name that he wanted to know her by. "Perhaps we can step into the office here to speak of family matters privately?" He nodded toward the nearby door.

Amy shook her head firmly. "I'm not going anywhere alone with you. I... I just want to ask you questions. You stop answering, or lie, and we're leaving."

I expected him to look frustrated, but if he was, he hid it well. "I understand. What would you like to ask me, Ame—Amy?"

It took Amy a moment to speak again. Clearly she had to work up the nerve for it. "I want to ask what you know about my mother. Why was I living with you and not her when New Wave found you? What happened to her?"

He frowned a bit. "What did Carol tell you about your real mother? What did she say I told them?"

Glancing away with an obvious flinch, Amy muttered, "Nothing. They didn't tell me anything. I didn't even know you were my father until... all this happened. I just knew I wasn't supposed to bring it up."

The man visibly winced for the first time. "I'm sorry to hear that. As I... told Carol and the rest of them, your true mother passed away before I knew of your existence. She was taken by cancer when you were around five years old. I believe she was sick for quite some time before that."

Amy sagged at that, eyes closing briefly before she said quietly, "Oh." Clearly she had been hoping, praying for more than that.

I saw Marquis take a single step, as though his first instinct was to comfort his daughter. But he stopped himself, realizing that it wouldn't be taken well. "I'm sorry, Amel—Amy. I wanted them to tell you the truth, about all of this. But it seems that..." He paused, considering a moment. "Well, one shouldn't speak ill of the departed. I'm sure they did what they believed was best."

Taking a step that way, I looked between father and daughter before turning to Amy. "Are you all right?" I asked her softly.

It took her a moment to respond, but Amy finally nodded a little. "I'll be okay. I just... I was hoping..." She trailed off with a sigh before straightening. "Never mind." Her attention moved back to Marquis then. "Why do you keep trying to contact me? I'm not gonna let you use me against the heroes. I'm not going to let _anyone_ use me. I make my choices, nobody else."

Marquis' head gave a slight shake. "You misunderstand. I do not wish to use you, Amy. You are my daughter, one whom I quite enjoyed spending time with during our year together before we were separated. I wish to get to know you."

"You're a bad guy," she replied flatly. "A villain. You were put in the Birdcage for a reason."

He regarded her for a moment. "Even the worst offenders, those facing execution, among the non-powered population are allowed the occasional visitor and phone call. I assure you, there are non-capes who have committed acts that would make anything I have done appear to be of no more concern than a traffic violation, who nonetheless are able to visit with their family members every week. I do not dispute my illegitimate activities, yet I do dispute the lack of equitable treatment in that regard."

For a minute, Amy just stood and stared at the man. She glanced toward me, then to Reach and Ruin before sighing. "They say you're big on your word. You give your _**word**_, and you never go back on it. Part of your rules. You never hurt kids, you never kill women, and you never break your word."

He acknowledged this with a nod, and Amy stared at him. "I want your word. Your oath in front of at least one of your men that you will never, ever try to use any of your family for your criminal ends against their will. You have to swear that you won't try to use your daughter's powers just to get ahead."

The man paused then, frowning slightly at the phrasing as though trying to pick something out, before nodding. He leaned back and knocked on the door near him. A moment later Spruce emerged, the obsessively clean man looking to me first, then to his boss.

Marquis began, his voice making it clear how seriously he was taking this. "Spruce, I am now stating my solemn and unbreakable vow to never willingly coerce, or have coerced, any family member of mine to engage in any acts they are uncomfortable with, regardless of how it would benefit myself or my enterprises. Should I do so, you will know that my word has been broken and is no longer valid for any future agreements."

Spruce's eyes flicked toward Amy, before he nodded faintly. "Understood."

Dismissing his minion back into the room, Marquis turned back to his daughter. "Acceptable?"

She still looked hesitant, but nodded. "Okay." She looked to the girl next to her. "Go ahead."

The man started to say something, but stopped at the sight of Pandora as she made the mask dissolve. His eyes widened, and I was pretty sure that I was one of very few people who had ever seen Marquis look legitimately shocked. "A... twin...?" His voice was weak with surprise.

The girl in question tilted her head, examining him curiously. "We are Pandora. And we are not a twin, Marquis-Father. We are a clone of Amy-Sister."

"A... clone... how-" Marquis started to ask, but Amy interrupted.

"How isn't the point. But she's with me. She's... my sister. My..." She flinched a little, and looked like she wanted to withdraw again, but pressed on. "She's my family, and we both wanted to meet you. But... I can't... I won't just turn against my friends, against the ideals I grew up with. You're a bad guy. I'm... trying to be good. So is she."

"Might I suggest a compromise?" Marquis offered, clearly recovering from his surprise much quicker than an average person would have. "One day per month."

Amy frowned at that. "One day?"

He glanced toward me before continuing. "One day where our animosities are set aside for neutral discussion and interaction. You have my continued word that I will not use those times to influence or attempt to gain any kind of... control over you or... Pandora... but merely to... spend time with family."

"Like the Endbringer Truce?" I spoke up finally. "Only just between you guys."

"Indeed." He nodded to me then. "This would be a private truce, between us and only us. One day a month for... the visitations that should have been allowed before."

It took Amy a second to answer, but she finally nodded. "Okay. A truce, one day per month. But... but now I... I just want to get out of here."

Her words, her need to retreat, looked like they pained him, but he nodded. "I understand. I expected no more than this, or I would have offered refreshments. Perhaps next time your visit can last longer, throughout a meal, for example."

"Maybe." Amy looked toward Pandora. "Do you want to say anything to him?"

The clone paused, seeming to consider that briefly before she stepped forward. Her hand raised to point at his chest. "If you attempt to harm or mislead Amy-Sister, your existence will cease."

"I would never harm my child." The man replied reflexively, before the tiniest frown knit his brow. "... or rather, my children." It looked like even he was still trying to come to terms with that idea.

Amy turned then, starting toward the door to leave. "Let's... let's go." Her voice was soft, a little depressed, obviously. She had clearly been hoping that her mother was still alive, and could be someone for her to connect with.

I let Ruin and Reach go ahead of me, following after them. At the door, however, I paused. A thought had occurred to me. Not knowing quite why I was asking, I turned back. "Marquis? Who was Amy's mother? She at least deserves to know that much, even if she's... gone." I felt a sharp pain at the reminder of my own parents, swallowing the thick lump in my throat.

His response was a slight smile. "Of course. Her mother was... you could call her a fan of sorts. We were together for only a very brief time, too brief for me to know much about the woman. I know that she was married when she passed, and her husband brought the child to me. He said that his wife had confessed that the girl wasn't his, and who her true father was, before passing away."

"What... what was her name? So I can tell her."

"Meinhardt," Marquis answered. "Candace Meinhardt."

I started to nod, before freezing. That name. I knew that name. Mars and Jess and I had discussed everything we could about their former lives, and that of the other Travelers, especially Noelle.

Candace Meinhardt was the name of Noelle's mother.

Noelle's mother, or rather, another version of her, had also been _**Amy's**_ mother.

**Interlude 18 – Genesis**

Jess Carmen had always been fascinated by super heroes. She had followed the stories about all of the heroes and villains that were a part of her own world, even though the vast majority of them were pretty underwhelming. There were only a handful that could genuinely be considered Super, while most were just playing at being more than they were.

And, more importantly, she had _devoured_ news about the **real** super heroes on Earth Bet. She obsessively scoured every little story about what they called capes that trickled through the connection that Professor Haywire had established. She read about everything, from their press releases to their grand battles. She'd known them like certain boys knew the stats of their favorite baseball players.

But she'd never expected to actually _meet_ any of them, let alone... **be** one. She had been from another world, a world with, at most, four real supers out of the entire population. And she was wheelchair-bound, her legs useless.

She was pretty sure that there weren't a lot of crippled superheroes.

Yet, impossible as it had been, she had now been a part of both sides of the ongoing cape conflict. Jess had been a villain, and now she was a hero. Her assumptions of how her life would proceed and what she was capable of, much like the world she had grown up on, had been left far behind.

Villain. She'd dressed it up in her mind as being a mercenary, of doing what they had to do to survive. Krouse had been good at that, had been really good at making them think that they had no other choice.

Now, Jess was pretty sure that the reality was that _Krouse_ hadn't been able to think of another solution, and he was both arrogant enough to think that because he couldn't find a solution then one didn't exist, and charismatic enough to convince everyone else that he was right.

And now? Now she was a member of the actual Protectorate. The most important, most _**heroic**_ capes she had ever read about... were her co-workers.

Her life wasn't perfect. She missed her parents, and her other friends. She missed her home. She missed the life she had unwillingly left behind. And now, she missed Noelle, Luke, and Oliver.

And Cody. She even missed Cody, even if he had been an asshole ever since they arrived on this world.

Maybe that was why it had been so easy to listen to Krouse for so long. She wasn't happy doing the things that they did, the jobs they had done in their vain search for a cure for Noelle or a way home. But that was kind of the point. Being happy, finding a way to live and do what they wanted to do, seemed to be a... betrayal. If they allowed themselves to find a way to live properly in _**this**_ world, it felt like giving up on their old one.

It had felt easier to betray her morals and be unhappy with her life and the things that she was doing, than to allow herself to be content where she was. Finding happiness, finding a _purpose_ here meant not focusing on getting home.

Now... she still missed her family and her old life. She always would. But she had also begun to build a life _here_. Two and a half years had passed since she and the others had been dumped in this world, and she was just now beginning to understand that pursuing goals and happiness here wasn't a betrayal of the life that she'd had before, but an extension of it. Maybe she would never find a way to go home, but that didn't mean that her entire life had to be miserable. She was allowed to be what she _**wanted**_ to be.

And in that very moment, what she wanted to be was a ten foot tall polar bear with ice-breath.

"H-Ho-holy... holy shit..." The man in the ski mask backed rapidly away from her enormous figure as she towered over him. His shotgun lay on the ground where he had thrown it, encased in ice. "Do-don't eat me. Don't fucking eat me, please. Please don't eat me."

He quivered and whined as she leaned in closer, a trail of urine running down his leg. She let just a little bit of frost emerge from her snout as she spoke, just enough to send a chill over his face. "Put the jewelery down."

Instantly, the man shoved his backpack off and dropped it on the floor of the parking garage that she'd chased him into. "He-here! It's yours, take it. Have fun. I-I-I don't know what bears need with jewels, but hey, t-to each their own, right? Just... just enjoy. I umm..." He slowly began to edge the other way, trying to retreat.

She sent a dismissive breath toward the nearby wall, creating a barrier of ice that brought the man up short with a yelp. "Don't move."

Frozen, not by her bear's ice breath, but by his own terror, the man stood ramrod straight. His eyes were wide behind the mask, while she used a single paw to gently brush the backpack away from him.

"Oh calm down." She finally told him when it seemed that his terror was growing by the moment with his certainty that she was about to eat him. "I'm not gonna hurt you unless you try to run away. Just stand still and... try not to piss yourself anymore."

A new voice echoed through the parking area as the person approached them. "Genesis, are you torturing the poor little jewel thief?"

"Not my fault you took forever to catch up, Clockblocker." She cast her bear's gaze back as the boy in white approached. "I can't carry handcuffs like this. Gotta make them stay put somehow."

The masked thief's contribution to the conversation was a whimpered, "P-please just arrest me. Send me to prison, I don't care. I'll tell you about all the other things I stole. Just don't let her eat me."

"I uhh, I'm pretty sure you're not on her menu, dude." Clockblocker shook his head. "Just turn around and we'll take you in. You really picked the wroooong neighborhood to pull a job in." He secured the man's hands with the zipties, then used his comm to call in the capture to the local police. The man clearly wasn't any kind of parahuman, so the cops could handle his arrest.

"Car's on the way to pick him up." He said a moment later, looking toward the bear while stepping back out of the man's earshot. "I can sit with him for a few minutes if you wanna disengage. Our patrol's done with anyway. Time for Assault and Laserdream to take over."

"You sure you don't mind?" Genesis asked briefly. "I mean, all I've got to do is wake up and I'm done. You have to come all the way back."

Clockblocker shrugged. "It's no big. I've gotta call my dad and see if he's hungry, so I'll do that while I wait for the blues to pick up Sparky over there."

"Panacea healed the leukemia, right?"

He nodded briefly. "Yeah, but he's still supposed to take it easy for awhile. Dad says he's fine, but Mom doesn't want to let him out of her sight. I don't know if she thinks Amy's power is just gonna wear off or what."

"Well, take him some of that fudge ice cream. You said she never lets him have that. If he's a prisoner, he might as well be a happy one."

Chuckling, Clockbocker waved a hand. "Good idea. Catch you later."

The view of her new teammate dissolved into the view of the dull gray ceiling of the Protectorate guest quarters she had been given use of to let her physical body sleep while using her power. Grunting, Jess levered herself into sitting position, taking a moment to orient herself as she yawned.

Half an hour later, after taking the time to fill out the report detailing how her patrol had gone, she was wheeling herself out of the Protectorate HQ and to the waiting ferry. Her stomach had chosen to spend the past thirty minutes of paperwork reminding her that she hadn't fed it since that morning, and she was trying to decide whether chicken or burgers sounded better.

She wheeled herself onto the ferry that was half full of various ordinary people who were among the small army of employes that made the Protectorate HQ run smoothly. Even now, Jess had some doubts, pangs of fear that if she allowed herself to be content here, she would be choosing to abandon the life she'd had at home, her 'real' life.

And that really was the problem. She'd spent over two years refusing to let herself see any of this as 'real', because to do so felt like throwing away any hope of going home. But not seeing it as real had been what made her allow Krouse to talk her into doing the terrible things that they'd done.

The ferry landed at the dock, and Jess passed Clockblocker as he boarded. He said nothing, not wanting to ruin the ongoing illusion that she was just a paper-pushing clerk at the Protectorate building, but gave her a slight nod. Now he would need to spend half an hour or so filling out his own report.

Chicken, she finally decided while wheeling herself along with the dispersing crowd of people who were all heading for their cars. She definitely wanted chicken, and possibly some kind of potato salad.

She was so distracted by thoughts of food, that she didn't notice the person following her until she was near the bus stop. Finally sensing the figure moving up behind her wheelchair, Jess started to turn, just as the handles of the chair were grabbed.

"Don't say anything." Sophia Hess whispered in a barely audible voice while pushing Jess's chair on past the bus stop and down the sidewalk. "If you yell, I have to do stuff I'd really rather avoid."

Taking a second to adjust to the surprise, Jess finally managed a careful, "Must be pretty bad if you want to avoid it. From what I hear, you've got a pretty high tolerance for distasteful things."

"Fuck you." Sophia hissed, giving the chair a firm shove as they turned the corner into an alley. "You don't know a damn thing about me. I do what I have to do to survive. Your freak friend's the real monster. What the fuck is she, a baby Endbringer or something?"

Jess said nothing in response to that, working on getting her phone out of her pocket surreptitiously while Sophia pushed her through a doorway of an apartment building. She'd just managed to get it into her hand, when it was abruptly replaced with a bar of soap.

She sighed and looked up at the figure standing in the open doorway of the apartment at the end of the hall. "Krouse."

"Hey, Jess." The man himself stepped out of the doorway, waving her phone. "Now why would you try to get people to interrupt our chat? Don't you want to visit with your friends? Oliver and Luke miss you. And Noelle, well, she was really upset about you choosing Tether over her."

He was trying to provoke her. She chose not to bite, shaking her head instead. "What do _you_ want, Krouse?" She'd known that Noelle would see her choice, and Marissa's, as a betrayal. But they couldn't just keep going the way they had been. Noelle needed _**real**_ help, not Krouse's empty promises. She needed help that the Protectorate could provide.

"What do I want? Loyal friends who stick together and help each other." Krouse's voice was scornful. "But that was too much to ask for, wasn't it?"

"Oh cry me a river, Krouse," Jess snapped. "What we were doing wasn't working and you know it. Your plans suck, and you're too arrogant to admit you have no idea what you're doing. You manipulate everyone around you, and you probably don't even realize you're doing it. It's so engrained that you think people are _supposed_ to communicate that way."

"Not that this bitch-fest isn't super-interesting," Sophia remarked from where she was standing. "But didn't you have some kind of **point** to making me grab the cripple cunt?"

"Don't call her a cunt." Krouse shot a glare at the other girl. "She's still a friend. She's just... confused."

Sophia snorted while pushing Jess's chair into the apartment, leaving Krouse to close the door behind them. "Yeah, you guys seem really close. Practically finish each other's sentences."

They were in the front room of a furnished apartment. It looked like some old lady's place, considering the ancient television set in the corner, the thick rugs, and the antique furniture. The place was also warm to the point of being stuffy.

"You and me, we aren't friends, Krouse," Jess informed him shortly as he paced around in front of her. "At best we were stuck together, and you convinced us we had no other choice."

"Damn it, Jess," Krouse looked even more frustrated. Good. "Can't you see that I'm trying to get us all home? I'm trying to help Noelle. Doesn't that matter to you anymore? Are you too busy playing super hero to think about your parents?"

A stab of pain went through her then, and she snarled, "Fuck off, Krouse. If all you want is to try to guilt trip me for my choices, write it on a postcard and label it 'shit that doesn't work anymore.'"

"Guilt trip you?" Krouse sighed and moved to grab a thin chain, which he ran through the wheels of her chair before wrapping it around the nearby radiator, securing it with a padlock. "Just to make sure you don't run off before we finish talking. Or roll off."

That done, he sat down in a stiff armchair that was covered in plastic. It squeaked under his weight. "Jess, I'm not trying to guilt trip you. I'm just giving you a chance to do what we always wanted: save Noelle."

"Let me get this straight. You're asking for help while _literally_ chaining me to the wall."

"Not you, just your chair," he replied dryly.

Jess sighed, then glanced between him and the spot where Sophia was standing. Now that Jess could see the other girl, she noted that she looked tired and worn out. Obviously she hadn't been sleeping well. Her clothes, a dull gray sweatshirt with a college name on the front and black jeans, looked dirty and had obviously been chosen to avoid being noticed. While Jess watched, Sophia plucked her crossbow up off of the end table where it had been left and began to examine it in a move that looked compulsive, loading and unloading the weapon while apparently ignoring what was going on around her.

"Where are you guys holing up?" Jess finally asked, turning her attention back to Krouse. "You want to help Noelle? Let's help her. The Protectorate can-"

"The Protectorate can't do a damn thing to help Noelle." Krouse tightened his fist, his hawkish nose flaring. "And even if they could, they won't. They'll just try to kill her. Is that what you want?"

"Of course I don't want Noelle to die."

_But what if there's no other choice? She's already responsible for so many deaths. No. That's not fair. She isn't responsible. The... thing taking her over. That's what's responsible. Noelle never wanted to hurt anybody at all. Yet... is it fair to put her life above all those that she's killed, however unwillingly? At what point do the lives of others outweigh loyalty to a friend, even if that friend didn't choose what happened to them? _

"Good." Krouse reached out to pat her hand until she snatched it back away from him. He sighed then, but pressed on. "I don't want her to die either. That's why we have a new plan."

"What kind of plan did you come up with this time, Krouse? Wait, let me guess, there's some kind of special Mayan artifact in a lost tomb somewhere and if we all just help you retrieve it, there's super-secret magic in it that can put Noelle back to the way she was."

His lips tightened in a little sneer before he suppressed it with a grimace. "Come on, Jess. I'm reaching out to you. I just want to tell you how we can help Noelle. I thought you'd be happy."

"I'll be happy when you admit that you don't have a damn clue what you're doing. I'll be happy when you admit that you're so obsessed with saving Noelle that you'll just let her get away with killing dozens of people."

"Yeah!" Krouse nodded almost violently. "I will. I'll forgive her, because it's not her. You know that, Jess! You know it's not her choice. We have to help her, not punish her. I promised her I'd get her through this, and that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to help her. And so are you."

She sighed a little, glancing toward Sophia, who was still toying with her favorite crossbow. "How do you think we can help her _**this time**_, Krouse?"

He smiled then, ignoring her dismissive tone. "With the clone, the one of Panacea. You know where she lives. We know you know where she lives. You can help us get one of them."

"Pandora?" Jess blinked at him, frowning while shifting her weight in her chair. The chain that was wrapped through the wheels rattled a little. "How do you think Pandora can help Noelle? Her power only affects herself."

"She can't." Krouse shook his head. "But we found someone who can, someone who will. There's just... a price. They want one of those clones."

Jess's eyes widened and she cursed. "Fuck, what the hell, Krouse? You want to give Pandora to some crazy person that claims they can help Noelle? You really have gone off the deep end."

"They _**can**_ help her!" Krouse stood from his chair abruptly, running a hand back over his face in exasperation. "We used to trust each other, Jess. You used to listen to me. What happened?"

"I grew up."

He sighed again, staring at her willfully. "Jess, we give them just one of the Pandoras and they will **help Noelle**. Isn't that worth it?"

"This may come as a shock to you, Krouse, but there are more important things in the world than your happiness. There are consequences. I promise you, trying to fuck with Pandora, even if you _**could**_ get away with it, has really nasty consequences. How the hell do you think you're gonna capture her?"

"Not me. They have people for that. We just need to give them the address."

Jess rolled her eyes. "Then what? You give her over to someone who claims they can cure Noelle? So they can use Pandora? Why do I doubt that they want to play hopscotch with her? We give Pandora to someone, we let them manipulate her, use her, and we unleash another hell on this world. Maybe one that it doesn't recover from."

"They can send us home." Krouse's voice was soft. "We don't have to stay on this world after that."

Jess stared at him in shock. "Have you **listened** to yourself? You can't just brush aside what would happen to this world just because you think you wouldn't have to live here. The people here matter, Krouse. They're living people, not video game avatars."

He stared at her for a long moment before his eyes narrowed. "We're saving Noelle. You're going to help."

"I'm not telling you where Pandora lives." She didn't know if whoever Krouse was working with had a prayer of containing even one of the Pandoras, but that wasn't the point. If they didn't, it would still be a betrayal that could push Pandora off the deep end. And if they _**did**_ capture her by some miracle, Jess was positive that she didn't want to know what they'd do with the clone.

He turned from her, taking up a bottle of pills from the desk. "Yes, you are." He shook the bottle. "Some medical tinker worked these up. It's basically truth serum in capsule form. You take three of these and you'll answer any question you're asked."

"Krouse, you're insane." Jess shook her head, eyes moving from the bottle to the man himself. "You're obsessed. Whoever you're talking to, they can't help Noelle, and even if they could, we can't betray-"

"Don't talk about betrayal!" He shouted. "You and Mars already did plenty of that. You just... just shut up for a minute, Jess. You'll have your chance to talk once you're ready to answer questions." He looked to Sophia before tossing the bottle to her. "Give her three of them. Make sure she swallows." Then he turned away, taking out a cell phone before dialing a number.

Catching the bottle, Sophia glanced down at it before shrugging. She set the crossbow back on the table while popping the lid of the bottle off with her thumb. Shaking three of the pills out, she walked over to where Jess was trapped in her chair. "Open wide, little cripple girl," she called in a sing-song voice. "Time for your medicine. Don't you wanna be all nice and healthy?"

Jess grimaced as the other girl used one hand to force her mouth open, then watched as the other hand came up with the pills. Before they reached her, she smiled.

Keeping her head in place, mouth forced open, Sophia sneered, loosening her grip a little so that the other girl could talk. "What're you smiling about?"

"It's just funny you should say that bit about being healthy," Jess answered with a shrug.

"Why is that-"

That was as far as Jess let the other girl get, before lashing out with a foot to kick her in the knee as hard as she could. There was a crack and Sophia screamed in pain before collapsing to the floor, the pills scattering as she fell.

"What the hell?!" Krouse spun around, dropping the phone as he turned, but Jess wasn't in the wheelchair anymore. All he would see was Sophia for a brief second, holding her leg in agony before she turned into her shadow-state and dropped through the floor, abandoning him.

Jess, meanwhile, had already stood from her chair, diving sideways to snatch Shadow Stalker's crossbow off the table where she had left it. She brought the weapon up, aiming it toward Krouse for a split second. Instead of firing, however, she instantly dropped her arm and swung it down and around to aim backwards. Sure enough, she was abruptly facing the wall in the spot where Krouse had been. The instant she was teleported, she pulled the trigger of the crossbow, sending the bolt back behind herself, where she had already adjusted her aim.

She was rewarded with a thunk of the tranquilizer bolt hitting flesh, and turned to see Krouse staring at his shoulder in disbelief as he sank heavily to the floor. His eyes were already glazing over. "H-how..."

Slowly, deliberately, Jess took several steps until she was standing over Krouse, holding the crossbow while shaking her head at him in disgust.

"Yeah, we sort of figured if you were going to come after any of us, it'd be the one you thought was still the easiest one for you to catch. So I played the part to lure you in." Lifting the crossbow, she prodded him with it until he fell onto his side, his eyes drifting closed as the sedative in the bolt did its work.

"Truth is, I had Panacea heal me weeks ago, dumbass."


	19. Arc 19: Surge

**19.01**

A couple hours after meeting with Marquis, Amy and I sat in Ethan and Sam's kitchen along with Marissa and Jess. Pandora had been convinced to leave Amy with us before heading back to her own territory, Cassie had had to get home herself, and Hunter had gone to bed, since she had to get up early in the morning to attend her online college class.

In a way, Hunter had been lucky. Her dismissal from the Birdcage had been easier than most would have been, because her specific trial and court case had been kept pretty quiet, rather than the big production that was usually made when the PRT wanted to show how much of an example they were making out of real monsters. She had been a minor at the time, and had pled guilty, specifically requesting the cage. There hadn't really been much of a trial other than a quiet sentencing, after which her record had been sealed away. Hers wasn't the kind of case that they wanted to advertise to show that they were keeping the worst monsters in line. Which explained why I had never heard of her before we met. Three years in the Birdcage had also changed her appearance enough that any of the very few people who knew about what happened recognizing her as the fifteen-year old little girl who went in was unlikely.

My brief musing about Hunter were interrupted by Amy, who had been silently staring at me for the last several seconds, blurting, "Are you **seriously** suggesting that I have _another_ sister that happens to be an S-Class threat?"

I shrugged both shoulders helplessly at that. "I'm just telling you what he said. Candace Meinhardt was the name of your mother, and that's also the name of Noelle's mother on Earth Aleph. Right?" I looked toward the other two girls.

Jess was standing, enjoying the fact that she no longer had to pretend to be confined to a wheelchair. "Yeah, that's definitely Noelle's mother's name." She reached up to gently pat Jalopy, who was perched on the top of her head, happily braiding her hair while Elvis Presley's 'The Wonder of You' played quietly. The little robot's attempts to woo her hadn't abated.

"Maybe it's a coincidence?" Marissa offered weakly from where she was sitting. "Same name, different person? It's... possible." Even she didn't sound that convinced.

"Could be," I allowed with a nod. "But I wanted her to be prepared for the possibility."

Amy snorted at that. "Consider me never prepared for any of this ridiculous family tree I've got. And how do we find out if it's true, if... Noelle and I really do have the same mother?"

"Really more the same mother dimensionally removed. So kind of like... cousins?" I shrugged then before sighing. "I don't know. Maybe we can look online and find a picture of Candace Meinhardt, and see if it's the right person?" I glanced toward Jess and Marissa. "You guys can say if she's Noelle's mother." Then I looked back to Amy. "And you can send it to Marquis and ask if she's the right one."

"Sure, that... might work." Amy nodded slowly before slumping back in her seat. "But if they are the same person, what does that mean?"

"I guess it means that you and Noelle are... interdimensional half-sisters?" Marissa reached out to pick a chip out of the bowl on the table and crunched it thoughtfully.

"Where _**is**_ Noelle?" I looked toward Jess. "And Luke and Oliver, for that matter. I don't suppose Krouse said anything about that before he got knocked out?"

Her head shook slightly, carefully so she wouldn't knock Jalopy off. "Nope. And he was still unconscious when the PRT people came to haul him in."

I sighed a bit, taking a chip for myself. "Maybe Ethan and Sam'll know more when they get home. Miss Militia promised to tell them anything they found out from him so that they could pass it along."

We were all quiet for a moment, before Amy asked, "What about Shadow Stalker?"

"I know I heard something break when I kicked her knee." Jess's smile was fierce. "But I don't know where she went after that. I couldn't just leave Krouse where he was, and by the time anyone else showed up, she was long gone. But without you to heal her, I don't know what she's gonna do."

"Yeah, she can't just go to the hospital," I mused. "She's gotta know they're keeping an eye out for her."

"What about the ring?" Marissa spoke up abruptly, looking toward Jess. "The one that controls the explosive that Bakuda implanted. Did you get it off of Krouse?"

Jess shook her head. "I checked, but he didn't have it on him."

That made me stare in confusion. "Didn't have it on him? Who else would have it? And why would she be doing what he said if he didn't have the control ring?"

"Maybe he gave it to whoever he wanted to give Pandora to?" Amy offered quietly. "If he was willing to do something that stupid, giving them control of Shadow Stalker wouldn't be any worse."

Before I could respond to that, the front door opened, and my two guardians stepped inside. Ethan made a beeline straight for the bowl of chips, taking a handful. "Uggnnn thank god. You would not believe the dirty looks I got just for suggesting that we order a pizza while candy-ass was interrogated."

"Dirty looks hell, I was kicking you." Sam muttered, dropping her keys on the nearby desk before stepping over to take one of the chips from him.

Ethan just blinked at her blankly. "That's what that was? I thought you were playing footsy." He turned slightly to wink at me while Sam promptly began to choke on her chip.

"So did you find anything out?" Amy pressed while fidgeting in her seat. "Who was he working for?"

"He won't say." Sam pulled out the last remaining chair and sat down with a sigh. "Trust me, they pressed him hard, but he wasn't giving anything up. They think he's convinced whoever he's working with is gonna get him out of there."

"They won't let that happen, right?" I looked between her and Ethan. "They've got him locked down?"

Ethan crunched a chip before nodding. "They've got him locked in one of the most secure cells this side of the Birdcage, blindfolded so he can't use his power, and he's got armed guards. Short of someone assaulting the entire PRT building to get him out, he's not going anywhere."

"What about Sophia?" I scowled at the table while saying the name of my ex-friend, the girl who had murdered my parents. Yes, she had been coerced into it, but the final choice had still been hers.

"There was a trail," Sam explained. "Apparently she ended up in the building manager's apartment and threatened him until he gave her all the pain killers he had. Then she made him give her the keys to his car. They found it ditched a few miles away."

Ethan looked between Amy and me. "Could Marquis be the one that Trickster was working with?"

"No way." Amy shook her head. "He was surprised by Pandora, and not in a 'oh, the girl I had that idiot try to kidnap is my daughter's clone' sort of way."

"He could have been faking it," Sam pointed out gently. "But I agree, because I think Trickster's too much of a loose cannon for your father's style. Everything I know about him says that he prefers people with more self control and ability to think things through. And the ability to learn from their mistakes."

"Yeah, that last one really eliminates Krouse." Jess muttered while holding her hand up above her head with two fingers down so that Jalopy could hold onto them with his grappler arms and sway back and forth as though dancing with her.

"Just for the record," Ethan added, looking to me. "Heading out to meet with someone like Marquis without telling anybody? Not your smartest move."

"Blame me," Amy insisted. "I made her swear not to tell anybody but the people we took. I didn't want meeting my dad to turn into some kind of Protectorate sting to grab him." She hesitated then before adding, a little more softly. "Or kill him."

"Still," Sam reached out to put a hand on Amy's arm. "We can help without turning it into a big production, Amy. Your cousin especially. You know you can trust her."

"I know." The other girl looked away, dropping her gaze so that her mop of frizzy brown hair would hide her face. "But I didn't want to put her in that kind of position, where she had to choose between her loyalty to me and her job and... oh." She blinked up then, staring at me. "Sorry, Madison."

"It's okay." I shrugged. "I get it. It was your dad, and... it was pretty much your only chance to say anything to him. If that got interrupted by the PRT..."

"I know he's a bad guy." Amy bit her lip before looking up at Sam and Ethan. "But I told him I'd give him one day a month to talk without any kind of cape stuff getting in the way. Please don't tell anybody about that. Any other time, I'll do what I can to try to catch him... not kill him, but catch him and bring him in. But that one day... I... I need that."

Ethan and Sam exchanged glances before the latter nodded. "I think we can keep quiet about that much, Amy. But your dad has a kill order out. You need to convince him to negotiate a surrender. If he comes in himself, they can call off the kill order. Maybe even arrange legitimate visits, or at least phone calls and letters. But if he makes this hard... your father's tough, but someone's going to take the bounty. Maybe someone in his own organization if they raise it high enough."

"I'll talk to him," Amy promised. "But I need to actually have a relationship first before I can use it to try to convince him to stand down and give up."

"Got her," Marissa interrupted before Sam could respond to that, holding up her phone triumphantly after having been intently using it to search for the past several minutes. "She's younger in this picture, but it's definitely Noelle's mother." She held it out so that we could see the picture of a young woman in her mid-twenties with light auburn hair, standing on a boat that had the name, 'Sauron's Other Eye' written on the side. "She was in the paper for some boating competition. Looks like it was about a year before Amy was born."

Thankfully, I had had a brief time before Ethan and Sam had to go in to help deal with the Trickster thing to give them a quick rundown on what we suspected about Noelle and Amy's mother, so they weren't lost.

Jess took a long look before nodding. "Yeah, that's her. Marissa knew her way better than I did, but there's no question. That is Noelle's mom."

Taking the phone after Mars offered it to her, Amy gazed down at the picture with a curious, longing look. "I guess I'll send the picture to Marquis and see if he recognizes her..."

"And if he does?" Sam asked quietly. "What're you going to do if you and Noelle are... sort of related?"

Amy was quiet for a few long seconds before responding softly. "The thing I should have done a long time ago. I'll help find her, and try harder to heal her. I don't know how, but I'll make it right."

I spoke up hesitantly after that. "We got lucky with Pandora. We've _**been**_ lucky so far, all things considered. If you touch Noelle again, if you make another clone..."

"There has to be a way for me to heal her without letting her make clones," Amy insisted. "I can control people's genetics when I'm touching them. Maybe I can find a way to halt the cloning process or... or something."

The silent looks that everyone exchanged then said everything that needed to be said. We all really hoped that she was right. Because either alternative, not healing Noelle, or having even more Panacea clones that retained their initial psychotic behavior, were too bad to contemplate.

"How many cars do you think they've got down there?" Reach asked idly as she stood next to me on the roof of an apartment building, gazing down into the construction site that should have been empty. Instead, there were three different semi's with those car transport trailers attached, and a couple dozen high-end sports and luxury cars. About ten people in blue overalls stood around, apparently waiting to start loading the cars.

"Twenty, at least," Flechette replied from a few yards away. "Most of them worth six figures."

It was the next afternoon. Technically school was still in session, but Wards (alongside a large group of other students to throw off suspicion) attended on a sort of half-day basis, taking the required courses for four periods before leaving for the remaining two. Ostensibly we were supposed to be attending some sort of work study/apprenticeship program to learn how to operate in the real world.

Which, I supposed, we were doing.

Sparrow and Vista had similar schedules, just for the middle school rather than the high school. Four periods for English, Math, Science, and History. When there wasn't a mission or training going on, we all attended online courses for our required foreign language credits, while our Wards work was considered our gym/elective.

At the moment, we had 'elected' to stop a bunch of car thieves. A tip from a reliable informant had come into the PRT, about a group of capes that was about to send almost a million dollars worth of stolen cars out of the city. The timing had been exact, and the informant hadn't known where the cars would be before now.

Of course, the Protectorate had initially been penciled in to step up and deal with the situation. Unfortunately, some kind of flare up of violence in Lung's claimed territory meant that all of them were busy. Obviously, trouble involving Lung and some of his people took precedence over a car theft ring.

Which meant that the initial job fell to the Wards, putting us on car thief clean-up duty.

While we waited for the capes in charge of this little group to show their faces, I glanced toward Flechette. After moving here to Brockton Bay, she had decided to stop carrying the arbalest on most missions. Instead, she had taken to wearing a tinker-made device on each arm that were able to launch smaller crossbow bolts similar to my darts. She also wore a rapier on her left hip and a whip similar to the one she had used during the Anubis fight on her right. She still _**had**_ the arbalest for special occasions, but chose not to lug it around for most of our missions.

Sparrow had changed what she fought with as well. She still wore her black costume with the glowing pink accents and smiley face mask, but she had spent the last few weeks changing out most of her equipment. She had the flight bracelets, something Flechette doubted she'd ever change, and her forcefield staff. But she alsowore a pair of gloves that simulated super strength up to around two thousand pounds, a belt that provided her with enough invulnerability to take a point-blank rifle shot without flinching, and I still didn't know what her last power was, because she insisted that it was a surprise. The point was, after the Anubis fight, she had adjusted her powers to allow her a more physical role in the battle, rather than being focused mostly on defense. I... wasn't sure what to think of that, other than the fact that it was yet another thing to curse Anubis for.

Vista, standing on the opposite side of me from Reach, pointed. "Look, it's those Outliar guys."

She was right. I could see Duelitist and Scintillant, alongside some guy in a Guy Fawkes mask that I had been told was what Geppetto tended to wear.

"Old friends of you guys?" Flechette asked.

"Independent villain group," I answered. "Separate from Lung or Marquis, and apparently struggling to remain relevant and make a name for themselves. He's a really good fighter and manipulates metal inside a couple feet of himself. The woman magnifies light into weapons or creatures, not sure if she can use sunlight or not, and Fawkes there is called Geppetto."

"I take it he's the one controlling those things." Flechette lifted her hand to point to a half dozen little dolls that were emerging from inside one of the trucks, apparently performing some kind of acrobatics routine like they were circus performers.

"What about Pursuit and Bulwark?" Aid put in curiously. "They both broke out weeks ago. Shouldn't they be here?"

Kid Win shrugged. "Maybe they're taking a nap, or stealing more cars, or maybe the band broke up. Either way, we just have to handle these three and their helpers." He paused before adding, while indicating the puppets and the human thugs. "The small ones and the big ones."

"All right, they're here." Flechette straightened. "Let's-"

I saw red lines of various shades attach themselves to each of my teammates. Instantly, I attached tether-lines to them as well, and yanked all of us down from the rooftop, straight into a hill of dirt below, around the middle of the construction site.

Just after landing, I looked back over my shoulder to see a glowing blue forcefield shaped like a giant bulldozer fly right across the roof where we had been. If we'd still been standing there, it would have collided with all of us.

As we picked ourselves out of the dirt, a voice called out, "Oh good, you've decided to join us!"

I looked up, to see Duelitist standing there, flanked by the two teammates he'd had with him. I didn't see where Bulwark was, even after he'd used that forcefield to attack us, and there was still no sign of Pursuit at all.

"I'd hoped for a couple Protectorate people to test my people with, but oh well." Duelitist shrugged absently before waving a hand. As he did so, a much larger group of thugs and criminals of all types began to emerge from where they had been hidden inside the structures that surrounded the construction site. They had apparently been waiting just out of sight. I could see random bikers, street thugs of various affiliations, and other criminals of every class that hadn't affiliated themselves with either Marquis or Lung.

"How many are there?" Flechette asked quietly, while we all turned in a circle to find ourselves surrounded by the small army of criminals. They were apparently ordinary humans, yes, but there were a lot of them.

"I stopped counting after thirty, boss," Kid Win replied. "And I wasn't anywhere near done."

"You all know the stakes, and the prize!" Duelitist called out. "We've only got two of the good stuff, so you're really gonna have to impress me."

"Let's say whichever two of you do the most damage to any of these Wards gets the prize." He continued, clearly soaking up the attention. "A vial of the stuff that can turn an ordinary guy or girl like any of you into capes!"

I barely had time for my eyes to widen at the mention of power-giving vials before a deafening roar went up from all the people surrounding our group as they fell in on us.

**19.02**

There wasn't time to communicate a plan. I used a line to launch myself upwards and back, flipping over in the air to look down at where I had been just as three men armed with knives and batons stumbled to a halt. At the same time, I called, "A surprise party, for us?!" Extending both hands down that way, I attached a line from the back of my gauntlets to two of the men's backs, using it to shove them face-first into the dirt. "See, if you'd warned us, we could've had better refreshments prepared."

Then I hit the ground in a crouch behind the third man and spun to kick his legs out from under him before rolling forward over his body to get from his feet to his head. "But I guess you'll just have to settle for whatever's-" As he lifted his face out of the dirt when I rolled into position, I planted my foot between his eyes. "-lying around."

Meanwhile, I could hear Flechette calling the ambush in to whoever was manning the control desk back at PRT HQ, but I didn't expect them to be able to get anyone out here before it was over.

A danger line attached to Theo caught my attention, just as the two men I had knocked down first picked themselves out of the dirt. I attached a line between the two men and yanked them face first into one another at high enough speed to drop them, before turning to look at where Aid was using the his shield to absorb several blows from a handful of thugs before triggering the shield's ability to release energy captured from the blows it took, unleashing a concussive wave that knocked that group flying. He hadn't noticed the one man with some kind of cattle prod stalking up behind him.

"Behind you, Aid!" I called out a warning. Unfortunately, he couldn't turn to deal with that threat, because two more came for him.

Twisting around, I caught the arm of another man who had thought he was sneaking up behind me while I was distracted. One hand held his wrist and twisted just enough that the thick pipe the man was using as a club dropped into my other hand. "Who says I'm hard to buy presents for? This is exactly what I wanted." I turned, simultaneously kicking out the side of the man's leg to drop him to one knee, before throwing the pipe toward the spot where Aid was. As it sailed over the head of the man who was rushing up behind Theo, I attached a line between it and the hat that he wore and gave a yank so that the pipe reversed course to crash into the guy and send him sprawling onto the ground.

The man whose wrist I was holding in a lock as he knelt next to me tried to grab for me with his other arm. As he moved, I gave a twist of his wrist, just enough to briefly blind him with pain before driving my knee into his face.

Pointing at the ground, I used lines on my gauntlets to throw myself into the air and backwards, extending my legs behind me so that my feet collided with the chest of another man, dropping him to the ground while he wheezed for air. My momentum halted by the collision, I dropped to the ground, catching myself on my hands before using another line-to-gauntlets trick to shove myself upright and to my feet just as yet another man brought his bat crashing down onto the dirt where my head had been.

"Aww, see, most of these guys are brainless thugs, but you've got sports ambitions!" I clapped my hands enthusiastically before coaching, "Okay, let's see your batting stance."

The man growled and lashed out with the bat, but I easily twisted away from it. "No, no, no. See, you've gotta keep your back straight, and kind of use your hips as you swing to put your weight into it."

"Shut the fuck up!" The man bellowed while swinging even more wildly with the bat, desperate to hit me. He kept trying for full-power home run swings, which I could see coming from a mile away and easily adjusted my stance to avoid.

The whole time, I kept berating him while the bat kept whiffing past me. "No, you've gotta choke up a little." Whiff. "Use your legs, really get that power in there." Whiff. "Weight on the balls of your feet, you can do this." Whiff. "Now see, I don't really think you're trying anymore." Whiff, whiff, whiff.

"Shut up, shut up, shuuuuuuuuuuut the fuuuuuck uuuuuup!" The man screamed, dropping his bat entirely as he lunged for me in a blind rage, practically frothing at the mouth.

Easily side-stepping his charge, I caught his arm with both of my hands and twisted with his motion, using the momentum to flip the guy all the way over before he came slamming down into the ground. He lay there, groaning in pain, while I shook my head in disappointment. "Baseball clearly isn't your sport, dude. Could I suggest, uhhh... checkers? Maybe a rousing game of Hungry Hungry Hippos?"

Two more men leapt to take their companion's place, and I resisted the urge to groan before meeting their charge.

The fight continued, and it rapidly became impossible to keep track of everything that was going on. Reach was sending clouds of dust out to obscure the whole area around herself, and the bodies of the men stupid enough to wade into the dust cloud occasionally came flying out, screaming as her powers propelled them. Kid Win and Sparrow flew above the fray, picking their fights, while Aid and Flechette had moved together to watch each other's backs. Every once in awhile I got a warning line about someone being in danger, but for the most part I was able to focus on my own fight. The fact was, I only got warnings when the person involved couldn't or wouldn't handle it on their own, and we had trained well.

Which was a good thing, since it was all I could do to keep up with the mass of people who kept trying to use my head as target practice for various blunt or sharp instruments. It was a good thing they weren't even a tiny bit coordinated, which allowed me to use their numbers against them, throwing one into another, slipping between attackers as they crashed into one another, or just plain attaching lines to their sleeves to make them hit one another.

Twisting aside from one man who had lunged forward with a knife, I planted my elbow in his gut while catching his arm and yanking it up to force the knife into the extended arm of another man who had been reaching for my neck. The blade cut deep, and the man dropped back with a howl of agony.

Two more quick elbow blows to the man whose arm I was holding, this time to the face, sent him reeling as well, as the knife dropped out of his grip.

Sensing movement coming up fast on the other side of me, I jerked aside. It wasn't quite enough. The movement prevented the swinging club from hitting me dead on in the small of my back, but I still took a glancing blow to the side that knocked me sprawling.

Several more men leapt on that perceived moment of vulnerability, but it was far from the first hit I'd taken. I turned the awkward sprawl into a roll, coming back to my feet in a crouch with both arms extended. Darts flew from each gauntlet, hitting two of the men who had been lunging for me. The third man kept coming, until I sent one of my metal balls flying off my shoulder and into his gut. It was a tiny bit of metal, and I was careful not to send it at full speed, but the impact still doubled the man over long enough for me to use another line under my feet to launch myself upward with my fist out to catch him across the face with a blow that sent blood spurting even as he collapsed with a strangled cry.

Grimacing then, as even more of the cannon fodder thugs came in to fill the gaps their fallen competition had left, I shook my head. "See guys, this is what happens when you don't book ahead." One of the men tried to hit me with a stun gun, but I dropped down, coming up under his arm to catch it and use the momentum of his thrust to hip-throw him while stripping the stun gun out of his grasp. "You try to get a table at the busiest place in town, and they're all booked up."

Turning with the stun gun in hand, I jabbed it into the stomach of the next nearest man while continuing to lament. "I'm gonna need everyone to form an orderly line, and wait for your number to be-" A red line warned me that someone else was in trouble, and I quickly launched myself upward to see better while finishing my sentence, "-called!"

Once I was airborn, I saw where the line was drawing my attention. It connected to Kid Win, who was hovering over the fight, using the concussive blast setting for his cannons to knock groups of people flying in order to keep any part of the mob from getting too large or organized.

Unfortunately, he hadn't noticed the man with the bent tire iron running along the top of the nearby semi to jump at him. Quickly, I attached a line between the semi's roof and the back of the man's pants, giving him a boost as he leapt that carried him flailing and screaming high over Kid's head before crashing into a mound of dirt.

I fell back to the ground then, returning to my own fight. "Now serving number thirty-six!" Sensing movement behind me, I used lines on my feet to jump into a backwards flip that carried me over the head of an enormous man with no shirt as he tried to grab me with both arms. Before he could adjust to my line-augmented backflip, I jabbed my stolen stun gun into his shirtless side and triggered it enough to drop his massive, muscled body.

"... thirty-seven?" I offered, leaping away from the big man's twitching form and toward a relatively open space before turning in a circle to keep track of everyone around me. "Now serving thirty-seven?"

Jokes aside, this couldn't keep going the way that it was. There were too many guys coming after me, and it was getting harder and harder to avoid them. As yet another pair came for me from either side, I used the last of my prepared darts to drop them and get myself a half second to breathe.

Using that brief moment to see what I needed to do, I attached new lines where they needed to be to make it work, then turned to face the incoming group of half a dozen guys that thought I was their best chance to earn the promised vial of powers.

"Now I know what you're thinking, guys!" I called out, holding both hands out toward them. They slowed slightly, confused by my words and the fact that I wasn't outright fighting them. "You're thinking, 'now we've got her, she's out of knockout darts.' And _**teeeechnically**_, you'd be right. But I _did_ order a new shipment of them, and it ought to be arriving riiiight aaaaboooout..." I pointed up casually while giving them a 'look over there' whistle.

As one, the six of them looked up to where I had used a pair of lines to both hoist one of the semi trucks, and suspend it over their heads.

"You just gotta love prompt delivery, you know?" I released the lines, letting the truck fall straight toward the group. They scattered, throwing themselves in every direction in their rush to get away from the several ton hunk of metal just before it slammed into the ground.

Turning, I walked right into the blow from another man that knocked me sprawling. Before I could move again, I saw him coming up fast with his foot cocked back to kick me.

The blow never landed. Instead, the man stumbled and began to choke violently. I rolled over and looked up to see a cloud of dust being forced down his throat even as he fell to his knees. His eyes grew wide while he choked on the dust cloud for another few seconds before the dust abruptly flew back out of his throat, just before Reach planted her foot in the side of his face and knocked him sprawling.

"You good?" She asked me while extending her hand. With her other hand, she made a flicking motion and I saw the other semi truck go careening past my field of view, scattering another group that had been trying to approach.

I took it and nodded while rising. "We gotta regroup. Where the hell did Duelitist and his idiots go?"

Her head shook. "No idea. They vanished before the fight even got going. Cowards."

"Hold on." I reached out to take her arm, then used lines to propel both of us halfway across the lot to where Aid and Flechette were.

We landed just in time to see Aid point his mace at a man and flick a button on the handle. As soon as he did, around ten of the little mini-drones that normally covered the outside of his armor came flying down, sending little electric shocks into the man from all sides and distracting him long enough for Aid to land a solid blow with the mace that put him out of the fight.

Flechette, meanwhile, used her empowered rapier to easily slice away the bulk of the aluminum bat that her opponent was wielding, leaving him with little more than the part of the handle his hands were on. As he halted to stare dumbly at the remains of his weapon, she shoved her sword point through the palm of his hand and out the back of it, drawing a squeal from him as he fell to his knees.

"Give up?" She prompted. When the man frantically nodded, she withdrew the tip of the sword and then pointed. "Lay down, stay down. Don't move. Aid, as long as he cooperates, give him the medical assistance he needs."

Aid nodded, and turned slightly before lifting his shield. I saw him tap a few buttons on the hidden computer part of the inside of the shield, and two of the drones flew down to begin taking care of the injured man's hand.

The space distorted a little around us, and I saw Vista emerge, dusting her hands off as she returned the space to normal behind her. "For a bunch of guys who really want super powers, they sure don't seem to realize how stupid it is to go after someone that has them."

"We've gotta clear these guys out and focus on the real threats." I spoke up, looking around at the remaining men who all seemed intent on surrounding us.

Flechette nodded in agreement before whistling loudly. High above, I could see Sparrow carrying two of the men by their arms as she flew over everyone else's heads. She went straight for the nearest wall and released the men at the last second so that they flew into it at just a high enough speed to knock the fight out of them. At the sound of the whistle, she inverted in the air and flew back toward us.

Kid Win arrived around the same time, panting a little. "Okay, I'm not even fighting physically and this is still exhausting. How the hell do we put these idiots down hard enough without killing anybody so we can deal with the assholes who put them up to this?" Even as he spoke, the tinker used two more concussive blasts in quick succession to help keep the men off us for a few more seconds.

"Sparrow," Flechette smiled at the younger girl. "You ready to use that last power?"

"Okay!" The girl bobbed up and down excitedly before reaching for the pouch on her belt. "But it'll only work for a couple minutes."

"That's all we need it to work for," Flechette assured her. "Go for it."

Sparrow withdrew what looked like a tiny plastic gorilla action figure. Turning to the men in the distance, she held the figure tight in one hand. It began to glow pink, before a loud rumbling noise stopped everyone in their tracks.

The ground beneath our feet shook, as the earth itself began to lift up. Before our eyes, and the eyes of the men who were still conscious, a great mound of rocks and dirt hoisted itself up into what was at first a shapeless blob, but then gradually resolved into the form of a gorilla that looked almost identical to the action figure that Sparrow was holding. This one, however, was roughly twenty feet tall.

For a moment, the random thugs just stood and stared as the earth golem in the shape of a gorilla towered over them.

"Raaaaaaawr, Fuuuuuuuzzzerbut neeeeed baaaaaaananaaaaa." Sparrow made her voice deep and gravelly, her approximation of a gorilla, I guessed. To my surprise, the massive figure itself echoed her words in a much louder voice.

"Urrrghhh, giiiive Fuzzerbutt goooood baaaanana!" Using her fingers, the little girl manipulated the toy's arm, making it reach out. At the same time, the giant gorilla figure brought its own arm out as though reaching toward the remaining men.

That was apparently their limit. Powers or no, the group scattered, running for any exit from the construction site they could find, leaving us standing amongst roughly half of their injured or unconscious companions that had already been put out of the fight.

"Since Clockblocker isn't here to say it," Kid Win announced. "I'll say it for him. That power is bullshit."

"You mean cool as hell." Vista corrected.

Ignoring that, Flechette turned in a circle. "Where're the real bad guys? Where'd they go?"

We searched, but there was no sign of them. We'd recovered the expensive cars (though two had been wrecked in the course of the battle, along with both semis), but the Outliars were long gone.

"Damn it." Cassie spun around as she cursed. "Where the hell are they?"

Vista came back from where she had been using her power to check the exterior. "Not here."

"I've got a better question," Flechette replied. "What did he mean by powers in a vial?"

Before I could try to come up with an answer to that, Theo spoke up instead. "We uhh, we can sort of... find out."

Turning that way, I blinked. "We can?"

His head bobbed in a nod. "I... ummm... I sort of..." As he spoke, the boy held his hand out so that one of his drones could land in it, releasing a small vial into his palm. "...managed to steal one of them."

**19.03**

A couple hours later, I was (finally) leaving the small, windowless room in the PCIPS building where Mrs. Pelham had been talking to me for the past forty-five minutes. Apparently showing up with what you claimed was a vial of super power-giving liquid tended to make people want to go over your story more than once. At least they'd let us all change into normal clothes first.

"Sorry, Madison." Crystal's mother apologized, hand squeezing my shoulder as she walked out with me. "It's just that if I didn't go over everything with you obsessively, someone else would. And trust me, you don't want to meet some of the people they use for debriefings around here."

I raised an eyebrow at that, turning my head to look at her. "Don't you mean people 'we' use for debriefings? I mean, you are the boss."

She winced, her near model-perfect face scrunching up briefly. "I suppose I do. Sorry, still not used to being in charge of all this. It's... different from running a small team." Sighing, she nodded toward the nearby vending machine. "Buy you a drink while we wait for the others to come out?"

I nodded, and we walked that way. "I guess it would take a lot to make the switch from heading a public team of superheroes to heading a bunch of super-powered spies and detectives."

Mrs. Pelham fed the quarters into the machine and then gestured for me to hit what I wanted. "Trust me, you have no idea. Trying to get the people in the same division to communicate is like herding rabid cats, let alone making them communicate with people _**outside**_ the division."

I took a Sprite and sipped it, hesitating before asking, "Are the others going to be okay? I mean, they don't know anything more than I do." _Less, really._ I still hadn't told her everything, like the fact that Genesis and Sundancer had both gained their powers from vials. I had a feeling that was going to come out eventually, especially once we found Noelle. But for now, it was Marissa and Jess's secret to keep.

She offered me a little smile and nodded. "They'll be fine, I've got people I trust talking to them. They should all be out soon."

"What's going to happen to that vial?" I asked after taking another sip from the can. "No one's gonna drink it, are they?" I hoped that no one was that stupid, but then again... the idea of having powers in a vial had to be tempting for some people, even the trained agents here.

"It's under lock and key." She answered promptly. "And the key is my eye. We're waiting for Alexandria to show up, and then we're going to have it analyzed to find out what's in it."

"Alexandria?" I asked, curiously. "What does she have to do with this?"

"Head of the PRT division." She pointed out. "Essentially my equal, but with a much more established organization. She expressed interest in knowing what's really in that vial. You can't really blame her, can you? If there're vials of super-powers going around, the PRT should know about it."

"Good point." I agreed before the door down the hall opened and Vista emerged just ahead of some nameless guy in a suit.

She muttered something under her breath that sounded like she didn't exactly hold the man who had been questioning her in the highest regard before walking up to join us. "Can we get out of here now?"

I offered her the can of soda. "Still waiting for the others."

Taking the Sprite, Missy took a gulp from it before giving it back. "How many times do you have to ask the same questions? We told you what we know. Just put the scientists to work examining the stuff we brought in. Is it that hard?"

Mrs. Pelham winced, waving a hand to dismiss the clearly aggravated PCIPS officer who had been with Vista before addressing her, "Sorry, Missy. Believe me, it's better to get it over with than have someone suggest later that we didn't get all the information that we could have, especially in a situation like this. I know it sucks to have the same questions asked over and over, but that's how it goes."

Missy still grumbled a little and put her back to the wall next to me. I hesitated, sensing that there was something else wrong that was annoying the younger girl, then gave her a poke. "Hey, let's go take a walk while we wait for the others." Glancing toward Mrs. Pelham, I added, "If that's all right?"

The woman nodded in agreement, and I started to walk away with Missy. Once we were out of easy earshot, I asked, "So what else is bothering you? Because I would've expected Cass to be the one cursing out the person debriefing her."

Missy winced a little before glancing at me. "It's just annoying. We did our job, we brought them the vial, and they spend an hour grilling us over every little detail, like we're making the whole thing up."

I nodded in agreement, before prompting, "And..."

"And..." She sighed, folding her arms as we stepped through a sliding glass doorway that led onto a balcony overlooking the parking lot. There were tables and chairs scattered around for people to eat at during the day, but right now it was empty. "And my father wants to move to California with his new girlfriend."

I blinked at that while moving to the edge of the balcony, looking out over it. I'd known that Missy's parents had been divorced for awhile now, but this part was news. "Oh."

"Yeah, oh." Missy shrugged. "He wanted me to go with him, talked about a whole new start."

"Really? What does your mom think about that?"

The smaller (yet not _that much_ smaller, cursed shortness) girl's answer was a snort. "You mean the woman who spends whatever parts of the day that she isn't in a coma drinking however much tequila it takes to get there? It'd probably take her a solid month to realize I was gone."

"So... you wanna go with your dad then? Seems like he wants you at least."

Her expression turned to a scowl. "No he doesn't. He just wants to beat mom at something. If I choose to go with him, it means I like him better and he can hold that over her, like he has something she doesn't. It's the same reason he's taking the Hummer, and I'm pretty sure he's more attached to that."

I winced, putting a hand out onto the girl's shoulder. "Hey, don't say that. They're probably just-"

"Don't." Missy shook her head, but she didn't pull away. "Just don't try to explain it or whatever. My parents are selfish jerks, but I'm not traumatized by it. Other people have to deal with a lot worse than a mom and dad who can't grow up and act like adults. I'm fine. Just annoyed." Her head shook. "But I'm not going with him. I'm not picking up my whole life and moving it just because he wants to use me as a trophy against mom." She shuddered then. "Couldn't stand to live with Willa anyway."

"That's his girlfriend?" I guessed.

"Yup. She's an idiot. She still calls the team my 'little club.' And she insists on talking to me like I'm three years old. Actually, I'm pretty sure I would've been insulted even when I _**was**_ three. It's all smooshy face, 'awww isn't dis a sweet widdle girl!'" She made an annoyed groaning noise and hung her head. "I just don't see why he likes her so much."

"You... don't think your parents have any chance of getting back together or... anything?" I asked hesitantly, while trying to ignore the sharp ache of pain that kept shoving its way into my stomach every time I thought about my own parents.

Missy's response was a look of pure horror. "God I hope not. They're insane now, but they were worse when they lived under the same roof. Apparently it took me a long time to start walking, and now I'm pretty sure it's because standing up would've put me up in range of whatever they were throwing at each other that day. I wasn't crawling because I didn't know how to stand, I was crawling to stay down out of the line of fire."

I tried to turn my laugh into a groan, shaking my head. "God, Missy, I'm sorry. I didn't know your family was so... unhealthy."

She shrugged. "Doesn't really matter. I don't talk about it much. It's usually not a big deal. Just... Dad was really pushing for me to go with him earlier. When I tried to talk to him on the phone before we were debriefed, all he wanted to do was talk about how much fun California would be if I was there. Hell, Willa seems more interested in what the team does than him. Even if she does call it a club and talk like we're toddlers playing cops and robbers. At least she pays attention. Sort of."

"In that case, it kind of sounds like he really does want you there," I offered a little lamely.

Her blonde head shook. "No he doesn't. He'll act like he does, maybe spend a day showing me how wonderful he thinks the place is and how much fun we can have. After that, I'd have to set myself on fire to get his attention. And even then I'd probably have to be burning near something he valued."

I cringed a little at that before wrapping an arm around her. "Well, I don't know what his problem is, because you're awesome. He's the one missing out."

Her elbow nudged me, but she didn't pull away from the one-arm hug. "You're just trying to butter me up so I let you win once in awhile when we spar."

"It _**would**_ do wonders for my confidence."

While Missy was still snickering, Theo and Cassie joined us on the edge of the balcony. I glanced up at the pair. "Chris, Mika, and Lily aren't done yet?"

Cass shook her head, eyes rolling. "According to the stupid ki-" she coughed, aborting the racial epithet. "-guy that got stuck with me, the two girls are waiting for the runt's parents to make sure she's good. Dunno what's taking Kid so long."

Theo, who looked even more pale and uneasy than usual, gave my sleeve a tug. When I glanced that way, I saw that he almost looked sick. "Err, Theo, are you all right?"

"He's been weird like that ever since the fight." Cassie gave him a nudge. "Dude, we won. Hell, you recovered one of those power vials. That's gotta be worth mega-points with the people in charge. You'll probably get a bonus or something. Do we get bonuses?"

Theo's head shook rapidly. "It's nothing, don't worry."

It quite obviously wasn't nothing, but I didn't press him. Which turned out to be a good thing, since Mrs. Pelham stepped out onto the balcony a moment later, accompanied by our other three teammates, and a woman whose appearance still made me want to stare in awe: Alexandria. She was in full costume, of course, the helmet hiding most of her face. From what I could see, she looked pleased.

"Good news, guys." Crystal's mother smiled. "You don't have to worry about that vial."

I blinked at that, exchanging looks with the others while Mika, Lily, and Chris joined us. "We don't?"

Alexandria was the one who responded, nodding. "Indeed. The Outliars were making good on their name. They were lying. There was nothing but colored water in that vial. Apparently they were making the whole thing up to give thugs a reason to fight you."

That... didn't make a whole lot of sense to me, but I wasn't going to question Alexandria on the subject.

"That doesn't make sense."

Everyone was looking at me, and I realized belatedly that my mouth apparently hadn't gotten the memo from my brain about that whole 'not questioning Alexandria's words' thing. "Err.. I mean...Why would they do that? What was the point?"

"Who knows how people like that think?" Alexandria shrugged. "But we had the vial scanned thoroughly and there was nothing of note in it. Certainly nothing that would give powers." She laughed then, as though the idea itself was ludicrous. "Some people are just so desperate to gain some kind of edge or ability, they'll believe anything." She looked distracted for a moment. "Now if you'll excuse me, I put aside a lot of work to come up here for what ended up being nothing. I need to get back." She rose into the air, gave us a nod, and then flew away.

"So that's it then?" Lily had a hand on Mika's shoulder after a moment of silence as we watched one of the Triumvirate fly off. "I know that Mika's parents haven't been able to make it here yet, but if the vial isn't really..."

Mrs. Pelham nodded encouragingly. "Don't worry about it, girls. We've got all the information we need. You guys are dismissed, for the rest of the day, actually. You've all done more than enough to earn a break. Does anyone need a ride home?"

Mika, Lily, and Missy took the offered ride, while Chris said something about wanting to get back to a project in his lab, taking the time to change back into his costume so that he could jetpack over to the PRT building.

Which left Cassie, Theo and I to walk out of the PCIPS building together. I looked over my shoulder to make sure we were clear, before asking, "So we know that vial wasn't really water, right?"

"Duh." Cassie snorted. "Either Alexandria's lying, maybe to keep 'vial giving powers' on the down-low, or someone switched it out before she got to it. Maybe one of the science geeks."

Theo said nothing, looking even more nervous now that we had left the building than he had inside. Cassie gave him a look, then rolled her eyes in exasperation before grabbing the boy's arm, proceeding to drag him down the block to a nearby alley. Curious, I followed.

"Okay, dude. Seriously. Spill it." Cassie instructed once we were safely hidden in the alley. "Why have you been so jumpy this whole time? Jumpier than usual, which is saying something."

Rather than answer her at first. Theo slumped against the nearby dumpster, groaning. "Oh man, oh man. I am gonna be in so much trouble."

I blinked at that, exchanging glances with Cassie before stepping that way. "Theo? What do you mean, why would you be in trouble?"

"If they ever find out... I..." Cringing, Theo looked around, then reached into his pocket. After a moment, he held his hand out and opened it... to reveal _another_ vial sitting on his palm.

For a moment, Cassie and I just stared at the vial, mouths open. "What... what..." I managed to get out eventually. "What the hell?"

"I... I actually got... both vials." Theo looked like he was about to throw up. "They... I didn't say... anything, because I thought they'd... take both of them, and... and Cass told me about what happened with Taylor Hebert's father and that whole... thing with how he got his powers and how there must be some really important people trying to hide that sort of thing. I... I thought something might happen to the vial that we gave the PRT, so... I kept one, in case you knew someone else that could... look at it. And I figured it would be easier to get through the ummm... the debriefing if only one of us was lying."

My mouth continued to hang open for another few seconds while I struggled to come up with a response. "You... you kept one of the vials... you lied through an entire debriefing just to keep one of the vials in case we needed it?"

He shrugged helplessly, wincing before pushing the vial into my hand as though he couldn't wait to get rid of it. "It... ummm... it seemed like the right thing to do at the time? I didn't know Alexandria was gonna show up, and when she came out I thought... I thought..." He gulped and gave a full-body shudder. "It was stupid. I just-"

Whatever he was going to say next was interrupted by Cassie, who abruptly all-but launched herself at the boy, knocking him backwards against the dumpster as she kissed him. Poor Theo flailed a little, apparently thinking she was attacking him at first before he realized what was happening. Then his hands just sort of waved in the air like he had no idea what to do with them.

"That..." Cassie finally pulled back to say, a little breathlessly. "... was awesome."

Theo made what sounded like a whine of agreement, his expression one of dizzy surprise as he formed his hand into a vague thumbs up gesture, head bobbing dreamily. "Uhhh huh..."

Seeming to only now realize what she had done, Cassie's eyes widened then and she took a slight step back, face turning red. "Errr... I mean... that—the vial is... do..." Pivoting suddenly, she looked at me. Her expression pretty much openly dared me to say a single word about what had just happened. "Do you know what you're gonna do with that?"

I stared down at the vial in my hand, swallowing. It took me a second, but I nodded. "I think I have an idea."

**19.04**

"So this is one of the vials that gives powers to ordinary people?" Dinah held the vial between two fingers about an hour later, examining it with a curious gaze.

We were standing on the roof of their motel, Dinah having explained that she liked the excuse to get out into the open air and away from... whatever it Riley and the others were working on below.

"PRT says it's just ordinary water," I pointed out mildly while watching the lights from cars on the distant freeway. "Not that we believe them, but I figured if anyone could check, it'd be one of your-"

"It'll give people powers." Dinah closed her hand around the vial, looking away from it as she turned back to me. "My power says so. I don't know what kind of power exactly, but it'll definitely empower anyone who isn't already a parahuman."

"Right, I kinda figured it wouldn't do anything for anybody that was already a parahuman."

She closed her eyes briefly, mouthing a couple words that looked like she was asking herself a question, before opening them and nodding. "Right, it won't do anything for someone that's a parahuman already. It might as well actually _**be**_ water in that case."

I snorted and joked, "Maybe that's how they tested the other one, had Alexandria drink it and see what happened."

"I don't think even the PRT is that stupid." Dinah looked at the vial again. "There's gonna be people trying to get this back. The Outliars, if nothing else. Two vials of this stuff had to cost a lot of money."

I shrugged at that. "Let 'em try. I'd appreciate those jackasses sticking their heads up again so I can play whack-a-mole with them some more. Still owe them for siccing a bunch of random thugs on us."

Dinah opened her mouth to respond again, but was interrupted by three sharp beeps coming from her pocket. Wincing, she reached in and took out a small flip-style cell phone. "Just a second, it's eight o'clock so I have to do this or they'll get upset again."

Quickly, she hit one of the speed dial buttons and then cleared her throat before holding the phone to her ear. A second later, her face lit up as she embellished, "Mommy? Hi, Mommy. Uh huh. Yup, I did my homework! Mrs. Pendel already has it. Nuh uh, I didn't wanna do Christopher Columbus. Cuz he was an ass- astonishingly bad guy, Mom. Uh huh. Oh! Yeah, we got the cookies. Panda really likes them. Especially the pineapple cookies."

Her conversation with her mother continued for a minute, while I stared, marveling at the stark contrast between the business-as-usual Dinah that I normally saw, and this facade of an innocent young girl with nothing to worry about except who she had chosen to do a history report on that she portrayed for her parents. It seemed like she had just flipped a switch to become a completely different person.

After talking to her mother for a few minutes, then taking about as much time with her father, Dinah finally closed the phone and put it away. Her expression closed up once more, the switch flipped back the other way. "Sorry." She turned to look at the lights on the freeway again. "Part of the deal for my parents not going nuts is calling them once a day. They get nervous if they don't hear from me."

I hesitated then before asking, "How long can you keep going like this, Dinah? I mean, how long can you spend here without going home to your family?"

For the briefest of seconds, I thought I saw a tiny flinch, an expression of regret, before she shook her head. "However long it takes. I keep telling people, this stuff is more important. What we're doing, it... matters more than one family."

Deciding not to press the issue further, I nodded to the vial. "Think Riley could run some tests on that and find out what's in it and how it works? Maybe we can even figure out where it came from." _And from there, get answers about Noelle's condition. Maybe even a cure. _I didn't dare voice that hope, not yet. But it had been tickling the back of my mind ever since Theo had handed over the vial.

Dinah nodded, turning toward the doorway that led from the roof back into the motel, where one of the Pandoras stood, patiently waiting. "Panda, could you send Riley up here to visit Tether?"

"Yes, Dinah-Friend." Pandora didn't move, but the message was obviously passed along to one of the others, because a moment later she added, "Riley-Friend is coming."

While we waited, I focused on Pandora herself. "Can you ummm... tell me what your personal designation is? I'm... trying to get better at telling you apart."

She gave one of those sharp, head-tilted quick jerks that looked more like a bird spasming than a nod. "This Pandora-Self is called Epsilon, Tether-Friend."

"Epsilon's the serious one." Dinah sounded like she was teasing a little, stepping over to poke Pandora. "She's the one that likes to follow all the rules and makes sure everyone else toes the line."

"Rules establish order." Pandora-Epsilon pointed out calmly. "Order is required for the world to run properly."

I raised an eyebrow at that. "If you're the one obsessed with rules, which one is the joker?"

"Lambda." The answer came from both Epsilon and Dinah together, and each of them smiled faintly afterward, apparently remembering something that had happened.

Before I could ask for any clarification, or even try to picture what a Pandora that liked jokes could be like, the door opened and Riley came rushing out, lugging an enormous backpack with her. "I'm here, I'm here!"

For a second, I had to marvel at the stark contrast between the way I had originally met Riley, let alone the Bonesaw I had seen pictures of, and the girl who was here now. Bonesaw wore aprons covered in blood over party dresses covered in even more blood. Her entire shtick was to look as young and innocent as possible, while being covered in gore. She wore clothes that were more suited to a girl several years younger than she actually was, and her hair and apparent personality had matched that. She had played up the child angle, apparently clinging to a state of ignorant innocence that had allowed her to ignore the terrible atrocities she was committing. It had been easier to play at being too innocent to know that she was being completely evil, than to accept the horror of what she had become. Most likely, she had purposefully clung to the maturity level she'd had when the Nine had first found her, resisting the increased understanding that should have come as she grew up.

But now, this Riley wore jeans and a tee-shirt. Her clothes were still covered in blood, but the false-childishness that had been such a part of Bonesaw was almost entirely gone. Her hair was no long up in curls, but had been pulled into a single tight braid.

In short, she looked like she was actually around Dinah's age, rather than dressing like an immature seven-year old who had raided her mother's closet.

"Hi Tether!" She waved. "Err, oh, you're not in costume. Am I supposed to call you Madison then?"

"Whatever you prefer." I glanced toward Dinah before looking back at the other girl. "How, umm... how are you doing, Riley? How's your project with Amy going?"

"Nuh uh uh." She wagged her finger at me. "No fishing for details. It's a surprise, and we're not gonna talk about it til it's all done. You'll just have to wait and see. And umm, I think I'll call you Madison when you're not in costume. It's easier to keep track that way."

"Okay, okay." I held up both hands in surrender. "But you really do have to explain what it is you're making down there eventually." The implications of what Riley and Amy could make when they put their powers and minds together still pretty much terrified me, but I was trying not to push too hard.

Instead, I nodded toward the backpack that she'd carried up. The thing was one of those huge hiking packs that was supposed to carry camping supplies. "Can you at least tell me what's in there?"

Turning her attention quickly to the backpack, as though she had briefly forgotten it, Riley all-but bounced excitedly. "Sure! That I can show you. It's really neat." Unzipping the pack, she reached inside and withdrew... what looked like a squirming, writhing mass of half a dozen pinkish-brown tentacles attached to a thick arm and hand.

"Uhhhhh..." My eyes were wide as I stared at the evil-looking thing, trying not to whimper at the sight of it. "What... what is that, exactly?"

"Watch!" Riley fussed with the arm a little, turning it over so that I could see that there was an opening at the end. It was a glove, I realized belatedly. A glove made out of actual flesh.

Before my eyes, while bile tried to work its way out of my throat, Riley shoved her own hand deep into the flesh-glove. The wet squelching noises that came from it as she did so were not helping at all, and I had to struggle not to whine out loud. "Uhhhh... R-Riley... are you sure that..."

"Shhh." Her face scrunched up. "Just gotta let it get the—ow-connections to the—oww-nerves so I—oww, can't turn off my pain cuz it—oww-needs the reaction for—oww—making sure everything's set-oww. I'm okay. I'm all ri—oww! Hey, you did that one on purpose you little—oww!"

"Riley!" My eyes were wide then. "If it's hurting, you don't have to-"

"Got it!" She announced triumphantly, holding her arm up with the flesh-glove attached. It covered her entire arm up to the shoulder, and was still so long that her own hand was probably only about three quarters of the way up the thing. It looked like a massive, deformed arm attached to her little girl body. An arm with half a dozen several foot long tentacles hanging off it, to be exact.

"What... ummm..." I kept staring. "What _**is**_ it exactly?"

"Check this out," Riley announced, reaching down to the backpack once more with her bare, normal hand. This time, she hauled out a thick chunk of cement, clearly barely able to roll it out of the pack and onto the roof. "Go ahead, lift it up." Her voice had taken on the tone of a magician, performing for an audience and allowing them to make sure that whatever trick he was about to perform was real.

First I glanced toward Dinah, who shrugged, then to Pandora, who watched with obvious curiosity. Then I leaned down to hoist the chunk of cement up. "Ugghn." I groaned, lifting it with both hands. "Wow. Okay, I get it, this thing is heavy."

Smiling, Riley reached out with that massive flesh-glove, turning it over so that the palm was faced up. "Put it right there, then step back."

Grunting a little, I did so, hoisting the heavy chunk of cement, placing it in the palm of the creepy organic glove while trying very hard not to think about the tentacles that were still hanging limp.

As soon as I had taken several quick steps away, Riley simply made the large hand close into a fist. It instantly and easily crushed the chunk entirely, sending a small cloud of cement-dust into the air.

"See how cool it is?!" Riley crowed, opening the hand to show what little remained before shaking it off the flesh-glove. "It can bend iron like it's taffy. Mmm... taffy. Hey Dinah..."

"We'll get some taffy," Dinah assured her. "Why don't you ahhh, explain the tentacles?"

I blanched. "Err, are you sure we need the tentacles explained? Ignoring them sounds good to me."

Instead, it was my protests that Riley ignored. Holding the flesh-glove out, she giggled. "Watch this."

Before my eyes, all six of the tentacles began to writhe and move around once more. One of them reached down to pick up the backpack, while another extended all the way out toward the other end of the roof, stretching to several times its original size.

Then two of the tentacles were reaching for me, and I barely resisted the urge to scream. "Uhhhh, R-Riley?!" I managed to yelp while the tentacles wrapped themselves around me.

Hugging me, I realized belatedly. The tentacles were hugging me. The... sticky... fleshy... ugly tentacles were actually hugging me. Somehow, that didn't make me feel any better.

"See?" Riley was grinning, as proud as any ordinary girl showing off her prize-winning science project. "They won't hurt you. They're completely under my control. Each of them can go from three feet to twelve feet long, and they're so strong that each one can pick up a small car." Her eyes were wide, shining with excitement. "Isn't it awesome?!"

"It's... ummm... it's really interesting." I managed, patting the tentacles that were still wrapped around me while trying to contain my whimpers as much as possible. "Could they let me go now, please?"

"Oh! Yup." Riley retracted the tentacles, and I breathed a sigh of relief. She was fairly bouncing with excitement. "I told you we were making some really cool stuff."

"And uhhh, that's the project you _**can**_ show me, huh?" I was trying not to imagine what the project she couldn't tell me anything about could possibly involve, if this thing was nothing in comparison.

"Don't worry, you'll get to see the other thing eventually. Once we get it working right." Riley waved her bare hand dismissively before gesturing to the tentacled flesh-glove. "This is just a side project."

I tried to shake off my disgust from the idea of the thing touching me. "Do, uhh, do you think you might have time for another project? I could use some help with something."

Riley's eyes widened at that. "You're asking me for help? Of course! Of course I can help! What do you need? Oooh ooh, do you need the tentacle glove?" She asked while stripping her arm out of the flesh-glove and offering it toward me with an eager smile.

I put both hands up quickly, shaking my head almost frantically. "No, no, no! I definitely, definitely do not need the tentacle glove. I just need, uhh, need you to look at and analyze this stuff." I nodded toward Dinah, who handed the vial to the other girl.

Riley set the flesh-glove down, then took the vial and examined it briefly. "Ooooh, a present! Err, what is it, exactly?" She asked while peering intently at the fluid inside.

"Supposedly this stuff will turn a normal person into a cape." I explained slowly. "It's the only one we've got, so please be careful with it. I was hoping you and maybe Amy could both take a look and tell me what... it is, exactly, and how it works. If we knew that, we might be able to figure out where it's coming from."

Riley looked at the vial for another moment, turning it over in her hand before turning her gaze back to me, her expression curious. "You really trust me to have something like this? You want _**me**_ to see how this stuff gives people powers?"

I hesitated, glancing away toward the lights on the freeway once more before turning back to her. "You mean do I trust Bonesaw to use this knowledge responsibly? Do I trust Bonesaw with a chemical that can give people superpowers?"

She visibly flinched at the name, but didn't look away. "Yeah." She gave a faint nod. "That's what I mean."

"No." I shook my head firmly. "I don't. I think Bonesaw would use it to hurt people. I think she'd use it to torture them somehow. I don't know how, exactly, but Bonesaw is pretty much the last person on Earth that should have access to this stuff."

I saw the girl cringe a little, before she lifted her hand with the vial in it, openly offering it back to me.

For a second, I just looked at the vial as it lay in her open palm. Then I reached out and gently closed her fingers around it for her. "And that... right there... the fact that you were willing to give it back even after I said all that? That's why I trust_**you**_ with it, Riley."

That made her eyes widen in confusion. "But you said-"

"I said that I wouldn't trust Bonesaw. And I wouldn't. But you're not Bonesaw. You're Riley. You don't have to be that person anymore. You don't have to be the _**thing **_that they turned you into. You're Riley. You make your own choices. And I... trust... those choices. I believe you can... that you _**will**_ make the right ones."

The younger girl continued to stare at me for several moments. When she spoke, it was in a hesitant, unsure voice. "B-but... I could... I really could do all that stuff again. I... could be bad. I could be... her."

I didn't break eye-contact. "Do you want to? Do you want to be that person again? Do you want to be Bonesaw?"

Her voice was tiny, almost a whimper as she shook her head while continuing to stare at me. "N-no. I... don't want to be that person anymore. I really... really don't. I swear. I... like being... me."

"I believe you," I told her simply. "And I trust you."

This time, it was Riley herself who hugged me, without the tentacles. And this time, I returned it.

**19.05 **

"Who would have thought that I'd ever be comfortable with someone that used to be part of the Slaughterhouse Nine giving me a hug, huh?"

All that met my words was silence. There was no one _**to **_respond. I was alone in this cemetery, sitting cross-legged between the two headstones that marked where my parents had been buried. It was the middle of the night by that point, but I wasn't frightened. I'd seen too much true, living evil already to be worried about a cemetery at night.

There was talk, of course, of digging up all the cemeteries and cremating the bodies in order to remove as many potential Anubis-created zombies as possible. Obviously, however, something that drastic took time to get off the ground. Enough people violently opposed the idea that it was going to have to go through the entire legal process, which took forever.

Eventually, I supposed, they would manage to make it a law that all dead bodies had to be dug up and burned. They'd already just recently managed to pass a law that required all newly deceased be cremated rather than buried, and those that were already in the ground couldn't be that far off.

So I was trying to spend as much time at my parents' graves as possible. Not that I actually thought that **where** I talked to them mattered, because I wasn't really talking to them at all. It was a comfort thing.

"I know you liked to see the best in people, Dad." I reached out to brush his marker. "Maybe you would've understood. Or maybe you both would've thought that I was being an idiot. Maybe we would've argued about that. Maybe..." I dropped my hand and my gaze, blinking away tears. "Maybe fuck Coil... fuck Sophia... fuck... god damn it." I brought both hands up over my eyes to wipe away the dampness there, pushing them back through my hair while taking in a long, shaky breath. "See how stupid I am? I just wanted to tell you the good news about Riley, and I can't even get through it."

Swallowing the lump in my throat, I looked toward my mother's gravestone. "I miss you guys. I'm trying to move on, forgiving Trevor, doing my job, going to school, helping people... but there's just... I keep thinking about you. Maybe it's worse now after hearing about Sophia going after Jess, but I just... I hate her. I hate her so much. Whenever I think about her, I just... I want to scream. I want her to... I..."

My voice trailed off once more, because I didn't know what it was that I wanted to happen to Sophia. I was frightened by how angry I was whenever I thought about her. My rage scared me, as much as I tried to put it aside. Rationally, logically I knew that Coil had forced her to do it, that he was primarily responsible for what had happened. And yet, Sophia had done the job. She'd had a choice. Yes, it was a terrible choice, one between dying herself and killing others, but it was _**still**_ a choice.

Coil probably would have killed them anyway, after killing Sophia for defying him. Maybe he would've sent someone else to do the job. But he hadn't had to. Sophia had done it for him. And now she was going around kidnapping my friends, _**still**_caring only about herself.

"Maybe this thing with Riley is **why** I feel so angry at Sophia." I mused. "If Riley can change, can want to be a better person, why the hell can't Sophia? What has to happen before she... before something changes? If she can kill innocent people and not... and not completely break down, when she _called_herself a hero, then... then what is it going to take?"

"Or maybe the real reason that I'm upset is because if Riley _**can**_ change, then maybe Sophia will eventually. Maybe Sophia will change, and I'll have to accept that. Could I? Riley's done a lot worse. She's killed a lot more people, in a _**lot**_ worse ways. But I just accept her change and don't think I could accept Sophia's? Is it that different just because I... I happen to care about the people that **Sophia** killed? How... how is that fair?"

I heard movement behind me, starting a little before a familiar and calming voice spoke up. "There's another difference between them too, you know."

Turning my head a little, I smiled faintly at Mars. "Hey... how... long have you been there?"

"Not long," she assured me before lifting her hand to gesture. "Do you want some... more company?"

I looked back toward my parents graves, then nodded toward her. "Yeah, that would be nice." I waited while Marissa moved up to sit behind me, leaning back a little to rest my head against her shoulder while her arms wrapped around my stomach and held me there. We sat that way in silence for a few moments before I spoke quietly, "You said there was another difference."

I felt her nod a little, her chin resting against my hair. "Yeah. Riley was attacked by the Slaughterhouse Nine. The Protectorate has the files about what happened to that little girl's family before she became Bonesaw. They... broke her, Mads. They destroyed that little girl and made her into what they wanted her to be. She was an innocent little kid and they... ruined her. Sophia... she wasn't innocent. She refused to take responsibility for what she already did. She wouldn't have been in a situation where Coil _**could**_ force her to choose between dying and killing innocents if she had accepted the responsibility for the death that she accidentally caused. She was already a killer before Coil got to her, a killer who refused to accept responsibility, who ignored whatever conscience she might have had."

"What happened to turn Riley into Bonesaw was not her fault, whatsoever. What happened to make Sophia into what she is now... that _**is**_ at least partially her fault. She made the rational, cold choice to kill two people in order to save herself. Riley was... not... anywhere near sane when she became Bonesaw. There's no way she could have been."

I was quiet for a few moments before speaking up. "So what you're saying is that Coil took advantage of Sophia's insanity, while the Slaughterhouse Nine **caused** Riley's."

She nodded once more before pressing a kiss against the top of my head. "I guess that doesn't really help much in the long run, does it? It's still about whether or not forgiving one girl for atrocities she committed in the past means you have to forgive someone else for less horrible things she does, even though those ones are more personal to you."

I swallowed a little, sighing softly. "I don't know what to do. What if we find Sophia and... and I can't be rational about her? What if I can't think straight, just because of who she is?"

Mars let one hand brush through my hair briefly before hugging me tighter to her. "If you don't think that you can trust yourself, then trust your friends. Trust your teammates. Trust the people who care about you. They'll help you make the right choice, if the time ever comes."

I managed a weak little smile, whispering, "Thanks, Mars."

We sat in silence for another few moments, before Marissa spoke up again. "So if I remember right, the last time we were here, you were starting to tell me about the time your parents took you to Disneyland, and why you got banned from the Teacups ride."

I couldn't help but smile a tiny bit, turning my head to look up at her. "Are you sure you've got time for that? It's kind of a long story, especially if we get into the Little Mermaid saga that came after that."

"Little Mermaid saga?" She echoed curiously.

"Yeeeaaah, like I said, it's a long story. You might be bored."

"No." Marissa shook her head and pulled me a little more firmly against her before nuzzling the back of my neck as she whispered, "I could never be bored with you, Madison. And I'll always have time to listen, especially when you talk about your family. Please. I'd... love to hear it."

A shiver escaped me before I nodded. "Well... it... started because Trevor really wanted a churro..."

"But Ms. Fortune, wasn't Visionary, you know, a really bad guy?"

It was the next day, and I was sitting beside Theo in our history class, trying not to fidget too much. I didn't really want to be here. Amy had come up to find me right before the bell rang, and had just enough time to tell me that there was something important we had to talk about. Before she could explain what that _something_ was, however, Ms. Fortune had almost magically appeared in the doorway to usher me inside and order Amy to get to her class.

So now I was stuck watching the clock, trying to not to obsess over what Amy might have wanted to tell me. Hell, in a normal school she could have texted me during class. But Arcadia was surrounded by a Faraday Cage of some kind, that prevented cell phones from working inside it.

It wasn't a literal Faraday Cage, naturally, which would have been ridiculous. That's just what they called whatever tinker thing it was that they used to block phone use. And the PRT had a way of getting through it, to contact Wards in class, of course. But otherwise, we were cut off from cell phone use while inside school grounds.

Ms. Fortune herself stood next to my desk, giving a light tap with two of her fingers to draw my attention away from daydreaming. She was... really good at knowing exactly whose attention was drifting and when she needed to pull them back. The very few students who had tried to get away with anything in her classes had, apparently, regretted it, because she seemed to know what they were up to almost before they had actually done anything.

Hell, for all I knew she was a parahuman with some kind of minor precognitive ability, just enough to give her an edge in the classroom. It seemed unlikely though. There were rogues, of course, people who used their powers not for good or evil, but just to make money in a legal way, without hurting anyone. But a school teacher? Hell, a substitute? I seriously doubted that any parahuman, even one with minor precognition that didn't lend itself to fighting, would be satisfied as a substitute teacher. It just didn't fit.

After tapping my desk, the woman in question focused on the person who had spoken up. His name was Walter, a small, freckle-faced boy with a mop of unruly brown hair. He'd been in one of my classes back in Winslow, but I didn't know him that well, other than the fact that he'd been in the school choir.

"You believe that Visionary was a villain then, Mr. Laning?"

"Err... doesn't everyone?" Walter kind of shrank a little in his seat, cringing at the attention even more than Theo might have. "I mean, he killed like, a bunch of people. He was a really bad guy."

"True," Ms. Fortune agreed. "Visionary did kill many people. But even more important than knowing _**that**_ something happened, is understanding _**why**_ it happened." She moved away from my desk, toward the front of the room while continuing. "So, does anyone here know why he killed those people?"

Heather Liddell, a girl who had already attended Arcadia before, and who reminded me of a blonde Emma (pre-triggering, of course), rolled her eyes. "Because he was a fucking psychopath?"

"Yet I'm sure even he knew not to speak without raising his hand first when he was in class." Ms. Fortune's reply was sharp as she placed one her small black rulers on Heather's desk while passing it. "Let alone cursing while doing so. That's one strike, Miss Liddell. Everyone in this class will now do a five hundred word essay. I will have a subject for you at the end of the class period."

Turning to face the class from the front of the room once more, the substitute finally nodded. "That said, yes, most people would say that the man who called himself Visionary was a psychopath. But that was not what I asked. I asked why he did what he did. What was _**his**_ reasoning?"

When no one responded or raised their hands, Ms. Fortune shook her head. "If you are going to learn history, you must learn that it is written by those who survive it. More importantly, you must learn that there are at least two sides to every story in history. Visionary believed that he was doing the right thing. He belived that his work, his efforts, would make the world a better place in the long run."

Liam Callis, the boy whose talking in our first class with Ms. Fortune had prompted her explanation of the strike essay system, raised his hand. Once he was called on, the boy said, "So he thought the ends justified the means? Like, somehow by killing people he was making things better?"

"Yes." Ms. Fortune's gaze passed over the room, seeming to linger briefly on me before she continued. "Because Visionary possessed a very specific precognitive ability. By touching someone, he was able to witness both the best, and the worst thing that person _**could**_ ever do in the course of their lives. Not what they definitely would do, but rather, both the best and worst things they had a very good _chance_ of doing. He believed that it was his job to touch someone and measure the best thing they might ever do, against the worst thing they might ever do. If he deemed the worst thing to be bad enough, he would kill them, to prevent them from ever doing that act."

I cringed at that, raising my own hand. "He killed people based on what they _might_ do? Based on some situation that hadn't even happened yet? That's... wrong."

"Yes, most people would agree with you." Ms. Fortune nodded. "Yet what of the people who are alive now only _because_Visionary prevented their **possible** deaths from happening?"

Liam raised his hand again, shaking his head the whole time. "You can't do that. You can't just kill people because of what they _might_ do. He should've used his power to find out what the circumstances were, and stopped those circumstances from happening. Or work with the PRT or the police. There were other ways he could've used his power besides murder."

"Indeed." Ms. Fortune said slowly. "Perhaps that will be the subject of the essay that Miss Liddell has earned all of you. Five hundred words... so far... on how you would have acted if you had Visionary's power."

In most classes, that would have been met with a chorus of groans. In this one, everyone remained silent, afraid of multiplying those five hundred words into some much worse number. Ms. Fortune pressed on. "However, for now, we'll return to our original point..."

**Finally**, I was able to leave the class. It was all I could do not to sprint down the hallway, barely restraining myself. It seemed to take forever before I found my way to where Amy's locker was.

She was there, waiting for me. As I approached, Amy nodded toward a nearby door, and I ducked out of the crowd and into what turned out to be an empty classroom.

Amy joined me a moment later, slipping through the door before closing it behind her. Then she turned to me and smiled a little. "We did it."

I blinked at that. "Who's we, and what'd you do?"

"Panda, Riley, Dinah, and me. It took all of us," Amy explained. "It took Panda's control of her genetics, Riley's understanding of biology, my power, and Dinah's ability to predict what would happen so we didn't waste any of the sample with tests, but we got it. We fixed that vial that you gave Dinah."

My head tilted in confusion. "What do you mean, you fixed it?"

"Okay, see, we don't know exactly how it works or where it came from." Amy lowered her voice conspiratorially. "But we do know that it... it forces a connection to _**something**_. It alters the body that it's in so that it can use cape powers. We... think that what we did to it will undo that change in anyone else whose body was altered that way to make that connection to... whatever's providing the power."

It took me a second to work my way through that. "Wait, are you saying that it can undo powers?"

Amy nodded at that. "Only in people who got powers the same way, but yes. Our alterations should, according to Dinah, undo whatever the original compound did that originally forged a connection to the powers. We couldn't make any more, because we still have no idea what that stuff is, so it's a one-shot deal unless someone comes up with any more of the stuff, but..."

My mouth opened, then shut, before I managed, "Noelle."

Again, Amy nodded. "Yes. We think that if Noelle drinks the new compound, it **should** undo the connection to the powers that the first compound created. Most of it anyway. After that, the physical changes can be fixed as soon as her power stops making things worse. Which means..."

I finished for her. "We have a way to cure Noelle."

**Interlude 19 – Shadow Stalker**

_Two Days Earlier _

"Oooh, now lessee what sweet little present has been left in my little hidey-hole this morning."

The voice shook Sophia Hess out of the deep sleep that she'd been lost in, just as a hand roughly yanked down the sleeping bag that she'd used to cover herself through the night.

It wasn't her sleeping bag, but one she had stolen from a camping supplies store the night before. That, of course, had come after she'd raided the drugstore next door to it and made off with as many bottles of industrial strength painkillers as she could manage to stuff into her pockets. She'd had to swallow several of the good ones just to keep going long enough to go into the camping store and get the other things she needed.

Then she'd found her way, through the haze of the painkillers, down beneath this freeway overpass and set up camp with a small, camouflaged pup tent and sleeping bag. The steady drone of cars overhead might have kept her awake, but the drugs she'd taken ensured that she passed out completely.

Still, even in her agony-filled, painkiller-addled state, she hadn't been completely stupid. As the man shoved her sleeping bag away and licked his lips, her hand closed around the knife that she'd taken from the camping store.

"Now, see..." The man, who looked old and thin, with scraggly white-gray hair and a moderate beard, was pontificating. "Usually I'd be upset 'bout someone sleeping in my spot. After all, it's **mine**. But for a pretty little thing like you? I think we can make an excep-" He froze in mid-sentence, his eyes suddenly growing wide as he felt something sharp press none-too-gently against the part of him that had been so excited to see her in the first place. "Uuullllp? N-Now now, let's not be hasty or nothing. Y'all really want this spot, well then we just-"

"Shut... up." Sophia snarled, growling the words to avoid whimpering. The pain in her leg was back, the drugs having run through her system. But she didn't want him to know how much agony she was in, or how easy it would be to disarm her. "Don't... fucking... move."

The man's head bobbed, his mouth firmly closed. He didn't dare move or make a sound, other than the slight whine that came from having a very sharp instrument so close to his important bits.

Keeping the knife where it was, Sophia slowly reached out to the bag nearby with her other hand. Gradually, acutely aware of each movement as it sent spikes of pain down her leg, she withdrew the hunting crossbow that she'd appropriated from the camping store. It wasn't as good as her real crossbows, but it would work well enough.

She didn't need any of that extra stuff anyway. It was all bullshit, stuff that made her weak, reliant on others. She was the predator, and she could do this all by herself.

Once the crossbow was in her hand, she let the hand with the knife fall while keeping the other weapon trained on the man so that he could see it. "Back out of the tent," she ordered through gritted teeth. "But don't move. Don't run. Just stay down on your hands and knees."

Slowly, the man obeyed, crawling backwards out of the tent rather awkwardly. Sophia kept her eyes on him, then popped the cap off one of the medicine bottles she'd stolen and shook several out into her mouth before putting it aside. Then she gradually worked her own way out of the small tent, never letting the crossbow waver from its target.

"P-Pain, huh?" The man had noticed. "I can get you some good stuff for that. Stuff that'll make you forget all about pain you didn't even know you had. You'll be flying so high-"

"I'm not some fucking druggie, assface!" Sophia spat contemptuously. "I don't need your shit. I need you to shut the fuck up and..." Frowning, she nodded to the bulge in his pocket. "Is that a phone?"

Quickly, the man reached for his pocket and withdrew a small, older model of cellphone before offering it to her. "Sure, I ain't got much time left on it, but it's all yours."

"Drop it there." Sophia nodded to the dirt, then gestured with the crossbow. "Then get in the tent and... and sit there until I need you again. Don't move, don't talk, just... just sit and shut up."

As soon as the man was out of her way and in the tent, Sophia picked up his phone and dialed a number from memory. Trickster had made sure she knew it, just in case.

It rang twice before the person that Krouse had been working for answered with a single word. "Who?"

"Me." Sophia spat back at them. "Krouse got his ass caught. I didn't. Tell me where to go."

There was silence from the other end for a moment before the person replied dismissively. "Nowhere. We no longer require your services."

Sophia blinked at that. "Huh? What the fuck is that supposed to mean? What about the bomb in my head? You said you'd get it out if I did what you wanted."

"Yes." The person agreed. "But you didn't do what we wanted. The clone is not here."

"It's not my fucking fault!" Sophia all-but screamed at the person. "Krouse is the one that got caught. It was his plan, his stupidity. I tried to-"

"Yes." Once again, the person responded with that simple word. "You tried. And your failure was not entirely your fault, so you will not be punished for it. But neither can we reward you. For now, and as long as you remain silent about who was involved in this endeavor, the explosive that was implanted within you will remain inert. You are otherwise free to act as you wish."

"Bullshit!" Sophia spat in angry frustration. "I'm hurt, fucker. I can't go to the hospital. I can't fucking go home. I can't go anywhere! What the hell am I supposed to do now?"

The other person was unmoved. "You consider yourself to be a survivor. Survive. As long as you do not threaten our secrecy, your explosive will not be triggered. Beyond that, you are no longer of use to us."

"No longer of use?!" Sophia shouted into the phone. "I'll show you who's not of use, you stupid-" Her attempt at a tirade was met by the click of the phone disconnecting.

For a long moment, the former Ward just sat there, shaking with anger and frustration while she gripped the phone. Finally, she let out a strangled scream and turned to pitch the phone as hard as she could into the nearby cement wall. "Fuck you!"

A sudden, sharp jolt of pain in her leg nearly brought tears to the girl's eyes, even with the drugs in her system. Grimacing, she sat still and silent before using her good let to kick at the tent. "Hey, cock-knob. Get out here, I need to ask you something."

The man slowly emerged, his eyes wide. "What... the fuck was that about a bomb?"

"Never fucking mind," she spat, leveling the crossbow. "That patch on your jacket." She nodded that way. "That's the Merchant's symbol."

The man blinked at that, looking down. "Ehh, yeah? For what it's worth. Gang don't mean nothing anymore, not since the evil cunt from hell started picking us off. Ain't much of the 'merchants' left that ain't either left the city or joined up with Lung's crew. Whatever ones he'd take, anyway."

"Whatever." Sophia's reply was dismissive. "The evil cunt from hell. You know where she lives?"

This had been the simple solution that she'd tried to convince Krouse of, to just ask the people that Pandora was terrorizing. But no, he had to think he was so clever with his own ideas. Well now where was he, huh? Asshole. Useless, stupid fucking asshole.

The former Merchant creep laughed out loud, annoying her. "Where she lives? You think I'm stupid enough to go looking for something like that? She killed ten of my buddies in two god damn days! The only thing I wanna know about where she lives is that it _**ain't**_ where I'm living."

"Right, so you're completely useless to me then." Sophia made a point of lifting the crossbow.

"Now wa-wait just a second!" The man held up both hands. "I ahhh, I do know the umm... general area that our types avoid. It ain't an exact location or nothing, but it might put you in the neighborhood. That's ahh... that's the best I can do."

"Tell me," Sophia ordered. "And if you're lying, I fucking promise that I'll make you regret it."

Apparently the former Merchant's real name was Zed. The place that Sophia had been sleeping was where he'd stashed his supply of real drugs to keep them out of his apartment down the street, safely away from his snoopy neighbors.

Under threat of a crossbow bolt between the eyes, Zed had taken Sophia to his car and then drove her to the area of town that the Merchants had all learned to avoid. They had done a single drive-through once, giving Sophia a chance to get the lay of the land. Then she had ordered Zed to park somewhere far out of the way, before telling him that if he tried to leave, no matter how long it took her to get back, that she would track him down.

After that, it had been a simple matter to use her power to sneak into one of the nearby buildings and up to the roof. There, she'd set herself up with the binoculars that she'd stolen from the camping store, and scanned the distant rooftops.

It took hours of patience, and a lot more pills, before she finally spotted two of the Pandoras on a rooftop that was so far away that she could only barely make them out even with the binoculars.

After that, Sophia had kept moving from one roof to another, only going when neither of the Pandoras were looking her way. She used her power to stay light so that she could slip from building to building with ease as she worked out which building the Pandoras were protecting. What should have been a five minute job took over two hours, just to avoid letting any of them see her.

But finally, she had it. She knew where the Pandoras were. _**She**_ had tracked them down.

"Fuck you, Trickster." Sophia hissed under her breath, while sitting inside a motel room across the street from the one the Pandoras were protecting. She could barely see through the grimy window, but it was enough to make out the figure standing on the nearby roof, and the one in the courtyard below.

They had three Pandoras protecting the place. But they weren't that creative. A few hours of watching told Sophia all she needed to know about their patrol patterns.

Briefly, she entertained the notion of calling up the person who had blown her off so completely, just to rub their face in the fact that _**she **_had been the one to find Pandora.

But no, fuck that. They dismissed her, had said she was 'no longer of use', so they could fucking rot.

At first, she hadn't really known _what_ she would do with this information. She'd just wanted to prove that she wasn't useless, that she could do what Trickster had failed to do. If he'd listened to her, if any of them had just listened instead of dismissing her, they'd already have their chance at the damn clone.

A couple hours into her observation, however, she'd noticed something much more interesting, and potentially useful for _her._One of the Pandora clones came out of the motel, escorting what Sophia at first thought was another clone. But no. That wasn't another Pandora, it was Panacea, lugging a heavy duffel bag along with her.

_Panacea was visiting Pandora_.

Gradually, a plan to fix herself had come to mind. But it would have be done perfectly. She couldn't make any mistakes or rush things, or she'd wind up facing Pandora. And as good as she thought she was, Sophia knew that she was absolutely no match for the seemingly invincible clone bitch.

But if she planned this right, maybe she could get to Panacea the next time she visited, before she reached the safety of the clone. Maybe... she could actually force the healer to fix her.

Eventually, she left her observation room, carefully making her way back to the car where Zed was waiting. She made the man drive her back to his apartment and used a pair of handcuffs that he had in his bedroom to lock him in the closet before taking another handful of pills. Then she passed out on the couch for several hours, not wanting to be anywhere near the man's bed. Hell, she hadn't really trusted the man's _couch_, but she needed to get as much rest as possible.

After all, she had to be as ready as possible when her chance to grab Panacea came.

Unfortunately for Sophia, her chance didn't come for a couple more days. Two full days of sitting and watching the street while hardly daring to move for fear of missing her opportunity. Or worse, somehow alerting the freak clone to her proximity.

It was out of fear of letting Pandora notice her that had made the girl choose a new building for her stakeout. This one was further away from where the Pandoras were staying, yet close enough to be along the same route that Panacea would take to get there.

When Panacea finally did show her face, Sophia nearly missed her anyway. The healer wore a sweatshirt with the hood up, and was clearly doing her best not to attract attention. In the end, it wasn't her that Sophia recognized, but the enormous duffel bag that the girl was carrying. It was the same one she'd been practically dragging away days earlier.

Quickly, Sophia used her power to leap from the room she was in, all the way to the alley below, her shadow-state allowing her to reach the ground safely. Then she waited, hefting her stolen crossbow and watching for Panacea to walk past.

She heard the grunting first, as Amy lugged the bag with her, muttering something about not taking her work home anymore. Then the girl herself came into view, starting to pass the alley.

"Hey bitch." Sophia hissed to get her attention, then lifted the crossbow when the girl looked that way. "Come on. Don't make me come get you."

Amy simply stood there, frowning. "Why exactly should I come into the dark and creepy alley with you, when I can take six steps and be in Pandora's line of sight?"

Sophia snarled. "Because you've still gotta take those six steps, and I can put one of these bolts between your eyes before you can. And the last time I checked, you couldn't heal yourself." When Amy continued to hesitate, she started to aim.

"Okay, okay." Amy took a single step into the alley. "What do you want, Sophia?"

"Simple." Sophia sat down heavily on a wooden crate, extending her leg while keeping the crossbow leveled. "You're gonna fix my knee. Then you're gonna get the fucking bomb out of my head."

"You know I can't do anything to your brain." Amy informed her. "Besides, if there's a bomb in there, I don't know what might set it off. Bombs aren't my thing. I'm not a doctor, I don't have any instruments. The most I could do would be to grow something to push it out of your head, and that might make it go kaboom. Still, if you insist..."

"Fuck." The painkillers were keeping the agony from being too much, but they also made it hard to think sometimes. "Just fix my leg. Just do it, then you can go. I ain't gonna hurt you and risk having the clone even more pissed at me, as long as you take this pain away."

Amy shrugged and reached for her, but Sophia quickly lifted the crossbow once again. "Wait! Just keep something in mind. I've got a guy that's been driving me around. Right now he's locked in the trunk of his car. You do anything bad to me, you knock me out, or do anything at all except what I tell you to, and he won't get out before he runs out of air. He'll die, and it'll be your fault. So just do what I asked you to, or his death is on your conscience, got it?"

Rolling her eyes, Amy gave a short nod. "I don't need to hurt you, Sophia. You've got nowhere to go. Even if I do heal you." She reached out to take hold of the other girl's wrist, before focusing. "Ouch. How are you still conscious?"

"I'm fucking special." Sophia snapped. "Just fix me and get it over with."

It didn't take long before the pain was finally gone, and she all-but slumped with relief. Part of her wanted to cry from joy, but she restrained herself.

"Right, if that's all you needed for this particular kidnapping..." Amy almost spat the words before straightening. "I'll be leaving." She grunted while lifting that heavy bag once more.

"Sure." Sophia stretched her leg out, smiling a little while wiggling her foot. "But leave the bag."

That, more than anything else, seemed to startle the other girl. "W-what? No, I can't do that."

Honestly, Sophia hadn't known why she'd said that. It had just seemed like she might want to take a look at whatever the healer was dragging around that was so important.

"Aww, do Amy and her little freak clone team have a secret?" She hefted the crossbow once more, confident now. "Three seconds, drop it and run. Do it, bitch, or you can find out what having a crossbow bolt through your knee feels like, and I'll take my chances."

"Look Sophia," Amy tried again. "You don't want to see this. I just-"

"One..." She began to count.

Sighing, Amy obeyed. She dropped the bag and started to back away. "Sophia, leave it alone. You don't want-"

"Two..." Sophia took a step that way, putting one foot on the bag while keeping the crossbow aimed.

Finally, Amy gave up and turned to run, sprinting out of the alley on her way to warn Pandora.

The clone would be coming for her, Sophia knew. She had to get out of there. Making Panacea leave the bag was probably stupid, but it had obviously been important. Maybe even important enough for her to trade to the person Trickster had been working for in exchange for getting the bomb out of her head.

Hoisting the bag up onto her shoulder, Sophia turned to run the other way down the alley. She could outrun almost anyone, now that her leg was healed. She'd been a runner in school, and her powers meant she didn't have to avoid any obstacles. She could run straight out, and in her shadow-state, the bag didn't weigh a thing.

Still, she didn't stop running for a solid fifteen minutes, constantly changing direction and slipping through buildings to make her escape. The last thing she wanted was to let that clone catch up with her.

Finally, Sophia stopped in yet another alley, dropping the bag before falling down beside it to catch her breath.

"Now..." She finally spoke a minute later while eying the bag. "Let's see what's so important."

Slowly she unzipped it and peered inside, before immediately recoiling with an audible yelp. "What the fuck?!"

It took another moment before Sophia felt calm enough to look again, and even then she nearly kept cursing. The bag was full of... flesh? An arm, maybe two? It was hard to tell without actually... touching it.

Grimacing, she finally did so, reaching into the bag before pulling out what turned out to be two large arms and hands made out of pinkish-brown flesh. Worse, each of the arms had several tentacles attached.

"Okay, this is some seriously fucked up shit." Sophia stared at the two arms she was holding in either hand. "What the hell are those freaks... wait..." Turning the fleshy things around, she blinked a couple times. "Gloves? They're fucking gloves?"

For a minute, she just stood there, staring at the things indecisively. Finally, she shook herself and came to a decision. "Fuck it. What else am I gonna do, turn myself in?" Snorting at the idea, Sophia set both flesh gloves on the edge of the dumpster nearby, before positioning her hands at the opening of each.

Even then, it took a few moments to psyche herself up before she shoved both arms into the gloves, grimacing the whole time.

The second the two gloves were n place, Sophia regretted it. She barely had time to wonder if she should pull them off again, before what felt like dozens of tiny little insect legs tickled her skin from her fingers to her shoulders. "What-" Then both arms exploded in agony, dropping Sophia to her knees with a scream that tore its way out of her throat. It was worse than when her knee had been broken. It was blinding, horrible pain that made her want to die.

After three seconds of this agony, she threw up on herself. After ten seconds, it finally ended, leaving Sophia panting and crying from the pain, curled up into a little ball on the ground.

Finally, after several long minutes, she opened her eyes and stared at the flesh-gloves covering her hands and arms. As she opened her fingers, the fingers of the gloves opened as well. She continued that for a couple moments, before pushing herself back to her feet.

Standing there in the alley, Sophia continued to stare at the ugly flesh-gauntlets that covered her arms. They didn't hurt anymore. In fact, Sophia felt... strong.

Curious now, she turned toward the nearby dumpster and lashed out with a single punch.

Her fist caved in the side of the dumpster, and she didn't feel a thing.

"Well," she allowed a small smile to appear. "That's kind of useful, isn't it? Still, brown and pink is really fucking ugly. It'd be better if you were black."

Before her eyes, the flesh-gauntlets turned color, darkening into the very shade of black that she had imagined.

"Fuck... me... sideways." Sophia breathed, hardly daring to believe her fortune. "I'm controlling this shit?" She focused on making one of the tentacles move, and it rose up before waving back and forth. Then she directed it to stretch up as far as it could, and gaped as the tentacle went from being three feet long, to being twelve feet long.

"Okay, if _**you**_ stretch and bend..." She turned her focus from the tentacles to the flesh-gauntlets themselves. "Maybe you do too." After a moment of concentration, the damn things actually began to shift and grow. They expanded, the now-black flesh stretching out around her body, encasing it, protecting it. Another thought collapsed the collection of tentacles back into the gauntlets, giving them more flesh to work with so that it would cover her entire body with room to spare.

And just like that, she went from wearing a pair of flesh-gauntlets to wearing an entire suit made out of the stuff.

Cracking her neck from one side to the other, Sophia slowly turned to the nearby wall. "One more test..." She extended her hand then, focusing on her real power. It came easily, and expanded to the flesh-suit she was now wearing, allowing her to push her hand through the wall and out the other side.

She was strong enough to dent a dumpster without really trying. The flesh armor was so tough that she didn't even feel it when she did hit things that hard, _and _it could manifest those tentacles any time she wanted it to. Most of all, none of it inhibited her _real_ power. She could go from brute-tough and strong, to insubstantial shadow-state any time she wanted to.

"All right, fuckers," Sophia announced while punctuating her words with a punch against the wall, this time without using her power. Her fist went straight through the bricks, shattering them into dust.

"Who's useless now?"


	20. Arc 20: Search

_**Notes: **HellKing666 – Glad you're enjoying it! There is a Shadow Stalker showdown this chapter, though in this particular case, it's not really so much against Tether. ;) _

_Imageination – Trickster's 'partner' is revealed in this chapter. That's about all I can say. _

_Soul – Wow, thanks for starting to go through and leave reviews on chapters. I do need to show Armsmaster making more Spider-Man comparisons. Hopefully a chance will present itself to see things from his point of view. And yeah, I think the age-based leader system has a lot of problems. I know the reasoning is that it drives leadership into people who might not have known they had the capability, but these teenagers are already risking their lives out there. If they hit a bad leader who **doesn't** learn quickly, very bad things could happen. _

**20.01**

With a squeal of tires being punished far more than they deserved, the car hit part of the curb coming around the corner, bouncing onto the grass, then back onto the road with a protesting whine.

Also whining protestingly? Dennis.

"See, when you said that you didn't know how to drive, I thought you just meant that you hadn't really done it before. I didn't know you meant that you were completely incapable of iiiii—stop sign!"

I hit the brakes a little too hard, making Dennis yelp. Hunter, thankfully (for more than one reason) remained silent in the backseat, though her face was more than a little queasy.

"See?" I announced offhandedly. "We stopped."

Looking a little bit pale for some reason, Dennis checked to make sure his seatbelt was still fastened. It seemed to be a nervous tic of his, because he'd checked it at least six times since we started going. "Umm, okay seriously, just make smooth motions. Don't stomp on the gas, you wanna-"

He was interrupted by the sound of the guy in the truck behind us impatiently leaning on his horn. The blaring noise startled me and I shoved my foot down on the gas, drawing another cry from Dennis as the car lurched into sudden motion. A second later we narrowly missed the mailbox on the corner of the road, swerving back into the middle of the street to avoid it. In the process the rear end of the car clipped a plastic garbage bin and knocked it over.

"Our side, our side, our side!" Dennis was making frantic waving motions for me to swing the car back onto the right side of the road. "Oh god, oh god, oh god!"

At that point, I thought he was being a tiny bit dramatic. After all, we avoided that oncoming moving van with at least half a car length to spare.

Apparently he didn't agree. "This side of the road, please. Please stay on this side of the road."

"I'm totally on this side of the road," I pointed out. "Hey look, highway entrance. Think we should-"

"No!" The voice came both from Dennis and from Hunter's computer pad almost simultaneously.

"Just, ahhh, pull over here." Dennis waved a hand vaguely, his other hand tightly gripping his door.

Obediently, I pulled the car over to the curb and stopped, shifting a little in the seat as I frowned. "I don't get it. When I'm out and jumping around, using my lines, I know exactly how to move. It's like I just understand where I am and where everything else is that I need to notice. I know the distance between things, and just makes sense. In this thing, it's all... garbled. I feel like... I'm trying to connect where I am to where everything else is, but it's like there's..."

"A huge hunk of metal in the way?" Dennis guessed. "Maybe that's the problem. Maybe your power gives you some idea of spatial relations between objects, and this whole car thing is throwing it off. You've got several feet worth of extra mass you're moving around that could be confusing it."

I frowned at that. "Well I can't exactly turn it off. I don't know how it works. I didn't even think about it being a power until now. I just... knew where things were around me. I figured it was instinctive."

Hunter leaned forward, tapping a few keys on her computer pad until the voice spoke up for her. "Maybe you can learn to work with it."

I glanced back at her and paused before nodding. "Maybe. But for now, I think you should try."

"Oh god yes, please." Dennis slumped with relief. "Let her try.. I've had enough near-death experiences today. There's no way Hunter could _**possibly**_ be as bad at driving as you are."

Sticking my tongue out at him, I huffed and opened the door. "It wasn't _that_ bad."

"You see this face?" Dennis waved his hand at his scattered freckles. "When we started, I was tan. You scared most of it off."

I snorted at that, coughing to catch my breath. "Oh please, the closest you've ever gotten to tan is when you hold one of those big Crayola boxes with the extra colors."

Hunter and I switched seats, and I settled myself into the back. Then I watched the back of Hunter's head as she adjusted the mirrors and the seat, smiling a little to myself. No matter how poorly I'd managed to drive, the point was that Dennis and her were sitting next to each other. It wasn't exactly the most conventional date (nor was it really a 'date' in any sense of the word), but one step at a time.

I was going to make sure they both realized that they liked each other, and that it was _**okay**_ for Hunter to like someone, that her power shouldn't force her to isolate herself. Because they were both important to me, and I wanted them to be happy.

"You all set?" Dennis asked Hunter once she had adjusted everything so she could see properly. When she gave an obviously nervous nod, he smiled and gave her arm a pat. "Hey, don't worry. Madison's already made the worst attempt at driving in recorded history. You'll be fine."

On second thought, maybe I shouldn't care _that_ much about Dennis's happiness.

"Now that I have your essays on Visionary," Ms. Fortune held the papers in a neat stack in both hands the next day. "One of you at random will come up to share with the class and explain your thoughts."

Okay, that was new. I was sure she hadn't said anything about _sharing_ essays before. Especially for something that had been a punishment rather than a regular assignment. Somehow, this whole thing felt rigged.

While the class watched, the substitute teacher shuffled the papers thoroughly, shifting through them without looking. One by one, she pulled papers off the top and moved them to the bottom, always a random amount, occasionally reversing it to take papers from the bottom and put them on the top. Finally, after thirty seconds of that, she ran her thumb down the side of the papers to the middle of the stack and pulled a single one out of there before looking at it. "Miss Clements," She looked straight to me. "You happen to be the lucky winner."

Theo gave me a sympathetic look as I slid slowly out of my seat. I gave him a brief thumbs up, knowing how bad it would have been for him if he'd been called. Theo still didn't have much confidence in himself in costume, let alone as just himself.

Walking to the front of the room, I accepted my paper from her, biting my lip. "Do I just... read it?"

She nodded, gesturing for me to face the class. "If you would, please."

After hesitating for a moment, I turned and cleared my throat before starting to read. "Visionary was a man who didn't understand his power. He thought that he was supposed to be both judge and jury, that his job was to see what people might do and then punish them for that. But that's not what his power was about at all."

"The power that Visionary had wasn't supposed to be about judging people. It was supposed to be about teaching and guiding them. See, he wasn't just shown the worst thing that someone might do. He was also shown the _**best**_ thing they might do. He wasn't supposed to be punishing them for the **worst** thing, he was supposed to be _guiding _them to the **best** thing."

"Having the ability to see what might happen, an ability that gives you that kind of view of the world and the future, doesn't give you the authority or the right to destroy someone's life. Power, especially that kind of power, comes with an inherent responsibility to use it in a way that makes things _better_."

"Visionary saw both the good and bad things that people could do. But he only treated the good things like they were some kind of balancing measure against the bad. He thought that the only point to him seeing the good things was so he could see if it was worth risking the bad things. But the entire point of him seeing the good things was so that he could help _guide_people away from the bad things they might do and to the good. If he was just supposed to judge people, he wouldn't see the good things."

"He wanted to help. He wanted to stop the worst things that people could possibly do from happening. But you can't do that and remain... human. You can't ruin people's lives, you can't take away their choices based on what _might _happen and then justify it as being necessary for the greater good. Because he wasn't just stopping the potential bad things from happening. He was taking away any chance of the good things happening too."

"Visionary had a chance to improve the world, to guide it, even in some small way, to being a better place to live. He had an opportunity to guide people through some really hard choices. Instead, he used it to punish them for what they might do."

"It's not enough to stop the bad things in the world from happening. It's not enough to just kill everyone who might do something wrong or horrible. You can't just make people's choices for them and force them to be a certain way just because you say they should. The world has to _deserve_ to exist, and the only way that it's going to get better is if people are **guided**toward the right choices."

"He was trying to help, but the way he did it was to blind himself to every other option. He became a monster to stop other people from being monsters. But that wasn't his only choice. He was just so intent on the bad things that he saw, that he completely ignored the good things."

"The question for this essay was what would we do if we had Visionary's power. That's what I'd do. I would help people make the right choices, not take those choices away from them. I would try to help make good things happen. Because if you kill everyone who might do something bad, you haven't stopped all the monsters. You've just turned yourself into the worst monster of all."

For a moment after I finished speaking, Ms. Fortune was silent. Her brow knit into a thoughtful frown before she shook her head. "An interesting point of view, Miss Clements. You may sit down now." Her attention moved to the rest of the class. "Would anyone who agreed with Visionary's actions care to make a counter argument?"

"I'm sorry, all right? I'm really, really sorry. I didn't expect her to take the bag."

It was later in the afternoon. Amy had found me while I was doing a solo patrol and practically dragged me to Dinah's motel. Apparently something had gone wrong the day before involving Shadow Stalker.

Now she, Dinah, Emma, and I were sitting on that familiar roof along with two of the Pandoras. Riley was working on something inside, which was apparently time sensitive enough that she couldn't pull herself away.

I sighed a little to myself while working it through. "So let me get this straight. Sophia isn't just healed now. She also has a pair of those super bio-power arms, so she basically just got a major upgrade in how dangerous she could be. Oh, and because it's biological, I can't affect it with my power."

Amy cringed, head shaking. "It was stupid to carry the stuff around, I know. I _**know**_ it was stupid to have them, but we needed to work out some of the bugs and I didn't have time to do it here. It was just supposed to be a few minor tweaks before I brought it back, but I got... busy."

Dinah took a sip from a bottle of Yoo-Hoo before adding, "That part wasn't supposed to happen."

I did a double take at that, catching her words. "Wait. What do you mean that _**part**_ wasn't supposed to happen?"

She shrugged at that. "We knew that Shadow Stalker couldn't go to a real doctor, so we figured she'd come visit Amy at some point. So we kept our eyes open. It was Emma who found her."

I glanced toward Emma, who shrank back a little and gave a self-conscious shrug. "I sensed the bomb thing in her head. It was no big deal."

"Wait, so you knew where she was?" I pressed, confused.

"We knew where she was the first time she showed up." Dinah corrected. "But she didn't approach then. She was just watching at that point."

I shook my head, frowning. "Okay, but why didn't you stop her then? You knew she was there, you knew she was probably trying to come after Amy. Why didn't you bring her down?"

One of the Pandoras spoke up. "We wished to, but Dinah-Friend believed doing so would create further problems."

"That's what my power said." Dinah agreed with a nod. "If we'd stopped Sophia right then, something bad would have happened. I don't know exactly what, but it was bad." She added a shrug. "Besides, Sophia isn't the big threat. Not even now. We don't need her as much as we need to know who Trickster was working for, and where Noelle is now. And he's clearly not going tell anyone."

"And how does letting her go help you find Noelle?" I asked while looking back and forth between them, trying to understand what they had been thinking.

It was Amy who replied. "We knew she'd come after me, just not when. Dinah's power kept giving even odds for her spotting me at any given time."

Dinah added, "And the odds of Amy getting hurt kept getting worse if Pandora was around. Apparently Sophia's power gives her some protection against Panda's absorption. As long as she stayed in her shadow state, she could last long enough to seriously hurt Amy if any kind of confrontation happened.

My mouth opened and shut as I tried to think my way through this. "So... that sounds like you wanted her to get to Amy." They nodded, and I sputtered in confusion, "But why would you want that?"

"Like I said," Dinah began to explain. "Sophia wasn't the real threat or the real target. But she does know who the person behind Trickster is."

Amy nodded. "Remember when we were talking to Marissa and Jess, and I said that Trickster might've given the ring that controls Sophia's explosive to whoever he was working for? We figured they probably still have it, just to keep her in line. Hell, that's probably why she hasn't come forward to try to exchange what she knows for some cushy deal. If she does, and they find out, she goes boom."

"Okay," I agreed. "But what does that have to do with Amy healing Sophia and letting her go?"

Amy finally gave a weak little smile. "It has everything to do with that. You see these?" She held a hand out so that I could see what looked like a half dozen tiny flesh-colored pills. "Emma and Riley made them."

Emma shook her head. "Riley m-mostly. I just... helped a little bit with t-testing."

I took one and examined the thing. It just looked like a little flesh-colored pill. "What is it?"

"A tracking device," Dinah answered. "They're all tiny little tracking devices."

Blinking a couple times, I considered the thing again. "So you wanted to plant one of these little pill trackers on Sophia?"

Amy shook her head. "Not just on her, _**in**_ her. It's mostly biological, so her power wouldn't notice it as not being part of her. But we couldn't exactly ask her to swallow two of them and call us in the morning. So we had to improvise."

"How exactly did you 'improvise?' I asked slowly.

She explained. "I had to touch Sophia to heal her. So... while I was healing her, I silenced the nerves in her hand enough that she wouldn't notice when I opened a tiny hole and pushed the tracking pill inside. Sleight of hand, with a little bit of complete control of biology to help out."

"No blood, no nothing? She didn't notice any of it?"

Amy shrugged. "I didn't want it to bleed, so I held the blood back, let the pill go in, then sealed it up. Most of her attention was on her knee and how much better I made it feel. I might have overdone it just a little and made her feel good just to distract her even more."

I absorbed that. "Okay so she has the tracker in her. What about the fucking bio-arms?"

Amy cringed, sighing. "That was my fault. I didn't think she'd pay any attention to the bag. She wasn't supposed to take it. She was supposed to run off after I healed her so that Pandora didn't find her. The bag was heavy, I didn't think she'd risk slowing down enough to drag it along with her. I followed our plan, I injected her with the tracker and then she was supposed to leave. Taking the bag was... uhh, unexpected."

I shook my head. "Shouldn't have taken that much of a risk, but I get it. So we just follow the tracker now?"

They all collectively winced. It was Dinah who explained. "The problem is, the way the arms interact with her body is shielding it from the tracker signal. Not completely, but it's... muffling the signal down to almost nothing."

I stared back and forth at all of them. "Wait, so you go through all that, and we still can't track where she goes?"

Emma raised a hand. "I can... adjust the signal of the t-tracker to ummm... to compensate for what the... for how the arms are... ummm... i-interfering with it, I think. But first I have to get... you know... cl-close enough to use my power on the tracker."

"Which means we have to find her again, and get you close enough to do that." I realized. "And until we do, Sophia's running around with a weapon made by Panacea and Riley that makes her about ten times more dangerous than she was before."

"That pretty much sums it up." Amy nodded.

"Oh good." I rolled my eyes. "And here I thought that reading my report in front of the class was going to be the last time I felt this queasy today."

**20.02**

"So, Pandora, seen any good movies lately?"

The clone turned to look at me curiously as the two of us stood on the roof of an office building overlooking a construction site. It was the same site that the Wards and I had been ambushed at. "Emma-Friend has spoken of this. It is... small talk, yes? Discussion irrelevant to the current endeavor."

"Our current endeavor being to scour the city looking for signs of Sophia?" I nodded. "Yeah, pretty much. Totally irrelevant, but I am curious about what you like to do in your spare time."

For the past several hours I had been helping Pandora search the city, all to no avail. Our lack of success wasn't surprising, considering how many places there were in the city to hide. Plus there was the fact that we were mainly wandering aimlessly. Riley had apparently been working on something to track down the missing arms, but that was going to take a while, and I'd thought it was worth taking the chance that Sophia might just be crazy enough to stand out if we took a look around. So far, no luck.

"Some of our selves do enjoy movies," Pandora finally replied. "Some of ourselves do not. Gamma-Self prefers to read quietly. I..." The word seemed strange coming from her. "... enjoy making the visions appear in my own head the way that I would have them appear."

"You like picturing the scenes in the book yourself, rather than watching it on a movie or tv screen." I considered that briefly before blinking. "So your other selves, they like different things? They have different favorite foods, different hobbies, all that?"

"Yes." She looked to me "We possess varied interests." Pandora's response sounded thoughtful. "The longer we exist, the more individual preferences we appear to accumulate."

"You like different things. You're becoming your own people."

She gave that strange, jerky nod. "Of a sort. We are of like mind in most respects. It is to be expected, given our origin. But yes, there are nuances. It is strange in some ways. Frightening in others."

"Frightening?" I raised an eyebrow at that. "It's hard to imagine you being frightened of anything."

"We fear things, Tether-Friend." Gamma's reply was quiet. "We fear what we might have become without the help of our friends, or the influence of the agreement made with Laserdream-Ally. We fear what others think of us, that we may not be seen as a real person. We fear our... own reactions."

I frowned uncertainly. "What do you mean, you fear your own reactions?"

It took her a moment to respond. "When we were first... created, our biological imperative was to destroy those who threatened our maker, or her continued evolution. That imperative was erased, but it was replaced by the urge to hunt, to improve our own biological superiority. That urge has been tempered with our increased understanding of morality provided by Dinah-Friend and other friends, such as you, and Laserdream-Ally. But our decision to ignore the urge to kill and acquire as much genetic material as possible is a conscious one, not a permanent alteration. We... I... fear that something may happen to alter our thoughts once more."

"You're afraid that urge to kill indiscriminately will take over again?" I asked quietly.

"Yes, Tether-Friend. I, and our other selves, do not wish to be the... creature that we might have been had our original Prime not been removed from our collective. We wish to be human, to be... real. But our instincts are permanently at war with the morality that we are taught. Our conscience is a learned, observed thing, and it is a small voice when compared to the compulsions toward maintaining biological superiority. It is our nature to kill and absorb, and continue to improve. It is our_choice_ to listen to Dinah-Friend and restrain ourselves."

I hesitated a little. "Are you afraid that you won't be able to resist the urge to kill innocents forever?"

"At times... we are afraid of our own reactions," Gamma confessed. "Our instincts must always be measured against the morality we have been taught, and we still understand so little of that morality. What is moral, and what is not? What is second nature to others, we must debate amongst ourselves. We wish to be human. We wish to be a person, our own person. But we do not know how, and some of ourselves fear that the time may come when our instincts and urges overwhelm our conscious thought. And we know that others fear our potential as well."

I hesitated for a moment before sighing and reaching down to take her hand with mine, squeezing it.

Pandora looked at me, then down at the hands. "What are you doing, Tether-Friend?"

"Telling you something." I turned to her, squeezing her hand. "Pandora, Gamma, whoever you are and all that you are, I... failed you. I let you call me friend, but I didn't really treat you like you were one. I let you help me, let you help all of us, but I didn't really think of you as... a person. I thought of you as being more like a super-weapon than someone with actual feelings, let alone a bunch of slightly different someones all with your own individual feelings and thoughts and dreams and..." I let out a heavy, long breath. "You're right. I was afraid of you. After all you did to help, after you kept your word, after you proved how much you really do care about Dinah and the others, even me... I was afraid, just because of what you _**could**_ do if you wanted to. But even if I was afraid of you, that didn't stop me from accepting your help when I needed it."

"All I could think about was what you **could** do if you chose to, just... completely missing the fact that you _**keep choosing not to.**_ Pandora, there are so many people in this world who get the tiniest fraction of the power that you have and they immediately use it to hurt others, to kill anyone they want to. They were born human and they choose to make others suffer just because they can. You... you have an _instinct_ to kill, an... urge in your... genetics to absorb people and improve yourself by taking from others. But... you don't. You choose not to. You... focus it onto the real bad guys. You control it, Pandora. You have the impulse to kill everyone who could possibly add to your own strength, and enough power that there aren't many people in the _world_ that could stop you if you really tried. The only thing that's stopping you... is _**you. **_You think you're not a real person yet? You're wrong. See, what really separates humans from animals is our conscious thought, our ability to choose, to go against our instincts. You... **choose** to be morethan your instincts try to make you be. That makes you a better person than a lot of 'humans' that I could name, Pandora."

"I'm sorry I never really treated you like a friend. I'm sorry I haven't really bothered to get to know you. Hell, it was months before I even knew you thought of yourselves as individuals. That's... that's not a friend, Pandora. And for that, I am very sorry. But I'd like to make it up to you. I'd like to... try... to be a real friend to you, to get to know the real Pandoras, not just the weapon that helps me beat the bad guys. Because you **are **a person, and you deserve a better friend than I've been."

Lifting her hand, I gave it one more squeeze. "Give me another chance to treat you like an actual person, a chance to be the kind of friend that you actually deserve?"

Her eyes watched me curiously for a moment before she gave another fast, twitchy nod. "Yes, Tether-Friend. We... would enjoy that." She paused then, seeming to consider. "If you wish to be true-friends, does that mean that you would not mind if we stop for food?"

"Oh-oh shit, yeah. I'm sorry, Pandora—I mean Gamma. I didn't even think about food. I was so focused on Sophia... but... I don't think we're gonna find her tonight. Do you have a place you'd like to go?"

"We do." She turned then, taking three steps before leaping off the roof we were on. She'd apparently made herself strong enough that the single leap carried her all the way to the next building.

"Wow." I shook my head before extending a hand, using a line to yank myself after her before calling, "All right then, lead on, Gamma-Girl!"

I continued to follow Gamma for several blocks before she abruptly landed in the back of an alley and stood there, waiting for me to join her before she spoke. "There." Her hand lifted to point toward a small diner across the street. "That is where we often meet Tiberius-Friend."

I blinked at that. "Err, okay I already knew I was a crap friend, but who's Tiberius?"

"He is-" Gamma stopped, seeming to consider her words briefly. "... my friend."

"My? As in Gamma's friend? As in Gamma has a friend that isn't part of Dinah's group? A... normal person?" I was, admittedly, completely floored. I'd never even _**considered**_ that Pandora might have other friends, other people she interacted with. It made me flinch a little more, to be reminded yet again of how much I'd been treating her like some biological super-weapon rather than a person who made her own choices and had her own feelings.

"We did not intend to locate a new friend. It... just happened." Gamma looked a little more uncertain, which strangely made her seem even more _real_ and human than before. "We do not lie, Tether-Friend, but we also cannot tell Tiberius-Friend our whole truth. We do not let him see what we truly look like, to protect our secrets and Amy-Sister."

"I get it." I nodded. "You have to disguise yourself to go out in public. He... met you in one of your disguises, and now that's the way he knows you."

"Yes." She turned to look at the diner then. "We do not like to deceive our friends. I... do not... like... to deceive Tiberius-Friend. But for now, we must."

"For now?" I asked, curiously. "Does that mean you might tell him the truth at some point?"

"We... I... do not know," Gamma admitted softly. "Tiberius-Friend is... a new... sort of friend. We do not—I do not truly understand how such things work. I... would like your help, Tether-Friend, to decide if he is trustworthy."

I hesitated slightly before giving a slow nod. "Yeah. I'll help you, Gamma. I'll help any of the Pandoras with anything that I can." Turning back to the diner, I asked, "Is he in there now?"

"No." Her head shook. "Now is not Tiberius-Friend's time. We merely wished you to know of his existence. Perhaps we might introduce you soon, as Madison-Friend."

I smiled just a little behind the mask. "Yeah, I'd really like to see the normal human boy that impressed big bad Pandora so much."

Her eyes widened as she looked at me. "You believe that Tiberius-Friend has made us bad?"

"No, no, no." I laughed a little, raising both hands. "It's just a figure of speech, Gamma. It's... never mind. I just meant I'd like to meet the boy that managed to be your friend. But for now, ahhh, I think you're gonna have to go in there and get food for both of us." I gestured to my costume. "Can't exactly go in like this, and I don't have the handy dandy shapeshifting power that you do."

She agreed, and we discussed what the diner had available for a moment. Apparently Gamma had memorized the entire menu. Then she changed shape to look like a completely unfamiliar girl with pale blonde hair and wide blue eyes before crossing the street to get our food while I waited in the alley.

Once she returned with cartons of food (apparently she _really_ liked french fries), we took them up to the roof and settled in next to the large air conditioning unit. I took the biggest bite of the patty melt that I could manage, groaning in pleasure around it. "Mmmm, I didn't realize how hungry I was until you said something. This is some good stuff. But ahhh..." I looked to the other girl. "Why don't you tell me how you met this Tiberius, hmm? I wanna know just what kind of guy is making friends with my friends."

Even as she started to tell me how she'd met the ordinary human, I could have sworn that Gamma actually blushed.

Eventually, we finished eating and gave up on finding Sophia that night. There hadn't been much of a chance anyway. Hopefully Riley and Panacea would be able to come up with something that could track down their missing arms, and we could locate her that way. Either that or we were going to have to go out with Emma and just canvass the entire city, one block at a time, until she sensed that explosive in Sophia's head.

Either way, I needed to get home. I'd told Sam and Ethan a bit about what was going on so that they wouldn't worry (though admittedly, 'I'm trying to track down the crazy bitch that killed my parents because she somehow got her hands on some biological super-armor that makes her a lot more dangerous' probably doesn't really do much to help the worry part), but I still couldn't stay out all night searching. I still had school in the morning.

After leaving Gamma with the promise that I would eventually meet Tiberius with her, I made my way back home in time to find Sam, Ethan, and Hunter in the living room watching the last few minutes of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

"Yo, li'l bit!" Ethan waved a hand at me lazily. "Take a load off. We've got the next movie ready to go."

"Err," I blinked at that. "The next movie?"

He grinned at me. "Yeah, apparently Earth Aleph has more than one Indiana Jones movie. It's like an entire franchise. Who knew, huh? So come on, take a break from world saving and veg."

Sam patted the floor next to her, quietly asking, "You're okay, right?"

Biting my lip, I finally nodded. "Yeah, I'll be fine. I just... I really wanted to find Sophia and... it didn't happen. She's still out there. She's still dangerous. Even more dangerous than before."

"You'll find her. We'll help." Sam assured me.

"Puppy's right." Ethan held the remote in one hand, waiting for me to sit down. "I don't care what kind of bio-weapon she scampered off with. We'll track her down and put her back where she belongs. And you can tell the two mad scientists to put a LoJack or something on the next monstrosity that they make." He used the remote to point at the floor. "Now sit so we can watch the next movie. I really wanna see where they took this series."

As if in agreement, my opinionated wristband began to play the familiar movie theme song, and I waved both hands in surrender. "Okay, okay. I'm sitting down." Shaking my head, I joined the other three and let myself forget about the ongoing problem with Sophia and everything else, just for a little while.

The next morning, I flailed at my blaring alarm, literally falling out of bed and onto the floor before my groping hand managed to turn it off. Groaning, I picked myself out of the tangle of blankets and sheets before stumbling toward the bathroom.

As I passed the stairs on the way, Ethan spoke up from the foot of them. "Breakfast is on the table whenever you're ready for it, Ewok."

I mumbled something in reply and shook my head while continuing on. He'd gone to bed _**after**_ I had, yet when I woke up (still tired), he already had breakfast ready. Sometimes I swore that Ethan had as many clone bodies as Pandora did. That or he didn't need to rest. Yet he swore up and down that he did indeed sleep. Sam promised she'd seen him do it. He just happened to be one of those people who could get by on a few hours per day and be just fine.

Lucky.

Yawning as I came into the bathroom, I cracked my neck and flipped on the light switch before grabbing my toothbrush. I had just started to squeeze toothpaste onto it while casually looking up at the mirror, when I saw something that made me freeze completely.

A single word had been written in red marker across my forehead, written in reverse so that it could be read properly as I stared into the mirror. A single word that had been written there while I slept.

**Prey. **

**20.03**

Needless to say, things got a bit _exciting_ after that. I missed most of it since I was at school (apparently not even death threats by psychopathic ex-super heroes hyped up on biological super-weapons is enough to get out of a trig test), but by the time it let out PCIPS had moved to protect both Ethan and Sam's house, and the Kanse's house next door where Mika and Lily lived. Yeah, apparently making a threat against one Ward that happens to live right next door to another one (who herself happens to be someone the Protectorate is grooming as the next Eidolon) is enough to light a fire under bureaucracy's ass so that by the time I got out of school, their solution was already well underway. Rather than move us, they decided it was better if undercover PCIPS forces moved into several nearby places to keep a constant vigil on our homes, in case Sophia was stupid enough to come back.

I doubted she would. She'd gotten her message across, loud and clear. She saw me as her enemy, the person who had ruined her life and put her in this position. None of it was her fault, because Sophia couldn't admit personal fault. Everything bad that happened in her life was a conspiracy against her.

She'd marked me, literally, as her enemy. I was the one she saw as her prey. She wanted me to be afraid of her, to see what she could have done if she chose to. She wanted me to feel weak and cowed against her superiority and strength, to see how much better she was and wilt under my own inferiority.

Instead, I was mostly just pissed off.

Worse, my anger didn't have a physical outlet that day, because rather than patrol I was scheduled for console monitoring duty. Instead of being out searching for Sophia myself, I had to sit inside the Wards HQ and keep track of what Reach and Vista were doing out on their own patrol. It made me feel stifled, even more helpless than Sophia's message had. I needed to be out there _doing_, not sitting in front of a computer just watching and listening.

At least I'd had time to visit Dinah's place right after school. Poor Jalopy had obviously been distraught about the fact that he'd been in recharge mode when Sophia had visited. I wanted to see if Riley could do anything to make him feel better about himself. She could make some improvements so that something like that wouldn't happen again if I left him there with her for a few hours and came back that night. I'd only agreed once she pinky-swore that it wouldn't do anything to his personality or his memory, and that he'd still be the same Jalopy once she gave him back.

Then I'd spent the next fifteen minutes promising Jalopy himself that he wasn't being punished and that I wasn't mad at him. I'd already had hugs from a lot of different people, but having a tiny bio-mechanical spider that was only a few inches long_cuddle_ up against me was definitely new. I felt like a mother sitting with her son outside the doctors office. It had seemed almost too cruel to leave Jalopy there if he was going to be upset, and I almost called the whole thing off.

In the end, however, I let Jalopy choose. I set him in the palm of my hand and told the little robot that I liked him just the way he was, but that if he wanted to let Riley make her improvements, that was his choice. He had bounced up and down and played the _Rocky _training montage music, which I guessed was his agreement for the upgrades.

Before leaving the little guy there, I produced a tiny picture of Jess for him, making Riley promise that he could keep it while she worked.

I honestly must have made that poor bio-tinker swear to me ten times that she wasn't going to do anything that would mess with Jalopy's personality, and that he'd be just the same when I picked him up again.

Worrying about my little friend, combined with the fact that I wanted to be out and **doing** things to help find Sophia, meant that I couldn't even hope to sit still while on console monitoring duty.

"You okay?" Lily called over from the other side of the room where she had been throwing darts against the board on the wall. "You've been fidgeting and sighing for the past ten minutes."

I flinched and tried to settle in the seat a little more. "Yeah, sorry. I just don't like being cooped up instead of being out there tracking Sophia down."

Throwing another pair of darts together (hitting her mark with almost too-casual ease), Lily regarded me. "Do you have any better idea of how to find her than you did before she called you out like that?

Sighing, I shook my head and slumped. "No. But even looking randomly would feel better than sitting here. I feel like I'm not doing anything to help find her, like I'm..." I trailed off.

"Hiding?" She guessed, walking over to the board to retrieve her darts. "It feels like she threatened you and now you're hiding in here instead of being out where she can find you if she wants a fight so bad?"

"Exactly." I gave the monitor another glance, making sure that my distraction hadn't made me miss any news popping up that Reach and Vista needed to be alerted to. Things looked clear, so I stood up to stretch while adding, "Sophia wants to call _**me**_out. If she can't get to me, she might go after others, people I care about. If she hurts them to get to me, that's my-"

"Her fault." Lily interrupted, stepping over to me. "It's her fault, Madison. Look, I know I'm new and everything and I wasn't here for all the background stuff. I know there's details that you don't really share with most people, and I sure as hell know that you don't tell the PRT everything about what you do with that Dinah girl and... all of that. But one thing I do know is that when someone does something bad, it's **that** person's fault. What Shadow Stalker does is on her, not you."

I didn't respond at first, biting my lip while looking toward the monitor. Finally, I said softly, "It still feels like my fault. I need to stop her. After my parents... I just need to stop her." I couldn't express it any better than that. Bringing down Sophia, putting her where she belonged, was something I **needed.**

"I get it," Lily's voice was quiet. "I don't totally understand, but I get what you mean. She's personal for you. But don't let her use that to lure you into doing something dangerous. You've got friends, you've got allies. You have people who care about you. Hell, I care about you and we only met a couple months ago, max. You're... good at making people like you, Madison. It's kind of freaky sometimes. But the point is, don't let Shadow Stalker taunt you into making mistakes. And don't do anything stupid like agree to meet her alone to 'settle the score' or whatever nonsense she might come up with."

I smiled faintly. "Is that a request from a friend or an order from a team leader?"

"Both." Her hand came up to poke me in the stomach. "Just promise you'll try to keep your head on straight when it comes to Shadow Stalker."

"I'll try." I promised, reaching down for the can of soda on the table to sip from before sighing once more. "But you know, that still doesn't make me feel better about sitting around here."

"All right." She reached over to turn up the volume on the comm so that we could both hear if Vista or Reach reported in. "You want a distraction? Then let's work off some of that aggression by sparring."

"Sparring?" I asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Yup, sparring." Lily winked and stepped back, taking a moment to crack her neck, then pulled her dark hair back into as tight of a pony tail as she could manage. "Come on, let's see what you've got."

About twenty minutes later, we were interrupted by Reach calling in. I stepped over to the console and hit the mic. "I'm here, what's going on?"

Cassie's voice came back a second later. "Be right with you, dealing with—Vista, hit the deck!"

My eyes widened and I looked to the screen, noting where they were. "Lung's territory, but not very far into it. Mostly the outskirts of the docks. There shouldn't be anything there worth defending."

Lily stood next to me, twitching a little. "Okay, I think I know what you mean now by how bad it is to stay on the sidelines. Are they all right?"

I shook my head. "I don't know, but I'm not interrupting again until they either report in, or take too long to. Whatever's going on, distracting either of them seems like a bad idea."

The other girl nodded, and we watched the clock on the wall impatiently. In actuality, only about thirty seconds had passed, though every individual tick of the clock felt like an eternity in and of itself.

Finally, less than a minute, yet a billion years later, Reach's voice returned. She sounded out of breath, but unhurt. "Yeah, we're gonna need you to make a note that Vista and I are mirifica."

I blinked, looking at Lily briefly. She shrugged back at me and I interrupted. "You guys are what?"

Cassie muttered something about the educational system before explaining. "It's Latin for amazing. Mirifica. That's M-I-R-"

"I'll Google it." I replied quickly. "What happened? Why are you... amazing?"

"Because we just took down Scintillant with no casualties other than a bit of building and street damage from one of her god damn laser bull things. She's unconscious and waiting for pick-up. Think you could send the boys with the foam asap?"

I stared at the monitor in surprise for a second before switching the comm over to the PRT channel to make the request, giving Vista and Reach's location before switching back to respond to Reach. "PRT van on the way. What the hell was she doing out there in Lung's territory alone? Wait, was she alone?"

"Nah, she was chasing some guy on a hoverboard like the one Kiddle used to fly around on. We interrupted their brawl, but the dude got away. We figured the nig—known threat was more important."

"Dude on a hoverboard?" I shook my head, having no idea who she was talking about. Kid Win was the only one I'd ever known that flew around on a hoverboard. "Anything else about him?"

"Didn't get a good look at the guy," she confessed. "I was a bit occupied. Vista?"

Missy's voice was even more unsure. "I think he was young, like Ward age. But Scintillant was really pissed off at him. She wasn't even paying attention to us until we hit her."

Lily spoke up then. "Good job guys. Be careful. You should probably stay on the comm until the pick-up van gets there, just in case Scintillant's friends show up, or hoverboard guy swings back around."

"Oooh, instructions from on high." I could picture Reach's lazy shrug. "Ma'am, yes, ma'am. Didn't know you were around, Bossy Lady."

Lily flinched a little and started to respond, but I muted the comm before looking at her. "She's teasing, Lily. She doesn't really think you're being too bossy. Trust me, if she's actually complaining, you'll know." Unmuting the mic, I said, "Vista, smack Reach for me, would you?" There was an almost immediate yelp, and I smiled. "Thank you."

Muting the mic herself, Lily shook her head. "Thank you. Sorry, I just get... nervous when she doesn't seem happy. I'm still not sure how comfortable I can be with the fact that the first team I was put in charge of includes a white supremacist. I'm not white and I'm not straight. That's two major strikes."

I blinked at her. "Former white supremacist. Totally former. She's working on it, Lily. She caught herself before she said the N word. They just slip out sometimes. Besides, I'm not straight either, obviously, and she hasn't said anything bad about that. She's trying, believe me."

"Yeah, I guess she is." Lily gave a slow nod before smiling faintly. "Thanks for helping me keep my head on straight."

Shrugging at that, I replied, "You did the same for me earlier. How could I not return the favor?"

She pulled out the seat next to me, and we sat together to wait for Reach and Vista to get back so we could hear about how the two of them managed to bring down someone as dangerous as Scintillant could be.

On my way out the doors of the PRT building about an hour or so later, Sam intercepted me. "Hey, there you are. Come on, I need to pick up dinner and I could use a couple extra hands to carry things."

I raised an eyebrow at her. "You know that's not the least bit subtle. You were waiting around for me to get out so you could keep an eye on me, weren't you?"

She winced before shrugging. "Can you blame me, Madison? She was in our house. She's got a vendetta against you. I don't like the idea of you going off by yourself. Neither does Ethan."

I stopped myself from sighing, seeing it from her point of view. "I know. I get it, Sam, I swear. I'm being careful. But I need to go and get Jalopy back from Riley. Can I call you from there and meet you somewhere to pick up food?"

Sam hesitated, her instinct clearly being to insist on keeping me close. To make her feel better, I turned and waved a hand broadly at the roof across the street, smiling to myself as the figure standing there waved back. "Look."

"That's... Pandora?" Sam guessed after looking that way.

"Omicron, apparently. She's been playing bodyguard ever since I left Dinah's this afternoon. I'll be with her on the way over and to wherever you are," I assured her. "You know what Pandora can do with biology. Sophia won't make a move."

"Yeah..." Sam agreed slowly. "You're probably safer with her than you are with me, honestly. Okay, just be careful. Keep your eyes open, promise?"

"Promise." I smiled a little bit and gave the woman a brief hug. "I'm not going to do anything stupid like run off by myself to lure Sophia into attacking me. Trust me, I've screamed at way too many movie characters for doing that shit to do it myself."

We made plans for where to meet up to get dinner, and then I took the time to change into my costume before using a line to meet Omicron on the edge of the roof. When I got there, she was sipping from a Big Gulp cup while she waited for me.

"Tether-Friend." She greeted me by waving the cup. "We have had the brown bubble liquid. We are very-" Her words were interrupted by a burp. "-happy."

I giggled in spite of myself and gave her a thumbs up. "Glad you're enjoying yourself. Ready to head back to the motel?"

She finished the contents of the Big Gulp before nodding. Turning, Omicron pitched the cup in a perfect arc off the roof, and I watched as it plummeted straight into a dumpster below. "Nice aim."

Together, we made our way back to Dinah's motel. When we arrived on the roof, I was about to head down before a voice from behind us called out, "Halt, evil-doer!"

Spinning on my heel, I stared at the figure that stepped into view. They were just under six feet tall, and wore a black leather duster over some kind of gray and black armor. A fancy wide-brimmed hat sat atop the mask, which itself had a long beak-shape extending out from under the hat. The eyes of the mask were covered by thick mechanical goggles. The beak-bit reminded me of those ancient doctors that wore the bird-like masks when they were dealing with the plague.

"Errr..." I was confused. Omicron wasn't moving, so she didn't think the person was a threat. And the voice, while muffled... sort of sounded like... "Riley?"

"Aww." There was a squelching noise, and the tall figure bent over in half before Riley pulled herself out the back. Thankfully, there wasn't any blood on the girl. There was, however, some kind of clear gel-like substance clinging to her. "How'd you know it was me?"

"Lucky... guess..." I stared at the bent over figure. "What is this?"

"It's my costume!" She beamed proudly and patted it. "Well, costume, biological body armor, and disguise all in one. Now nobody'll know who I really am when I come out and help! And I've got the best name ever."

Still trying to cope with the fact that Riley was apparently piloting a biological suit of armor around as a disguise, I weakly asked, "Best name ever?"

"Bones!" She literally bounced with excitement. "Get it? Bones. Cuz it's me, but not cute, so it lost the aw. No aw, so Bones! Isn't that perfect?"

My mouth opened, shut, opened again, then shut one more time as I failed to find an adequate response before finally managing, "I... wow. You... you're something else, Riley."

She beamed with pride and patted the figure of her bio-suit/costume. "Yup. Best disguise ever."

**20.04**

Some people might have thought that any method of travel could get boring or mundane if it was engaged in often enough. I invite those particular people to try getting around the city by repeatedly slingshotting themselves in the right direction. I didn't so much fly through the air as fling myself through it in what was essentially a perpetual sideways skydive. I would launch myself, fly a couple hundred feet, pick a new landmark to attach a line to and then yank myself that way.

It was, frankly, an amazing way to travel, and I was never going to get bored of it. Attaching a line, getting myself airborne, and then releasing it once the momentum was built up enough to send myself flying past one building before using another line to keep myself going rather than surrender to gravity felt incredible each and every time. It was a sort of freedom that I had never imagined before my powers. Among so many bad things that had happened, and the ever-present knowledge that it was my mistakes and the death of an innocent girl that had led to my having such powers to begin with, this was still something that made me feel good.

More importantly, my method of travel was also a way of clearing my head so that I could focus better later. As I launched myself off of a billboard and flew along a line that was attached to the office building of some insurance company, I stopped worrying so much about Sophia and Noelle for a few minutes. I thought of nothing except for where the next line was going, zoning out to let my mind drift.

It was September 9th, the next afternoon after I'd been introduced to Riley's new alter ego. It also happened to be Saturday, which meant I hadn't had school. Instead, I'd spent the morning and early afternoon at the cemetery with Cassie to do our community service.

I wondered, at times, what my community service would be if the law about burning all bodies went through and there no longer _were_ any cemeteries.

Once my work was done for the day, I took off and had spent the past hour lining my way across town with my ever-present Pandora bodyguard keeping me company. Part of me tried to convince myself that I was searching for Sophia, while the rest ignored that little delusion and accepted the fact that I was just flying around randomly while hoping that something would happen.

Finally, I set myself down on top of a billboard advertising a local youth group that was just starting up, waiting for Pandora to join me. She materialized out of a cloud of smoke a few seconds later, and I gave her a wave before sitting down to let my legs dangle. "Are we having fun yet, Iota?"

"Yes." She gave me a quick nod. "We are having more fun than a monkey's barrel."

I snorted in spite of myself. "No, you mean 'more fun than a barrel of monkeys.'"

She blinked at that, clearly doubting me. "Truly, Tether-Friend? How many monkeys could one fit in a barrel? It must be either a very large barrel, or very angry monkeys. And how is it fun?"

I shrugged helplessly at that. "I dunno, it's just a phrase. I think it was a game or something."

We sat in silence for a few moments while she considered that, watching the streets below. A few people looked up and waved, and both of us waved back. I wasn't sure what people thought Iota was, but the fact that we weren't fighting seemed to make them decide she was okay to wave at.

"I guess Sophia's keeping her head down after all that." I finally said with a low sigh, trying not to scowl too much. I wanted to find Sophia on our terms, but failing that I would have accepted just getting the confrontation over with. Unfortunately, it seemed like she was content to hide and let us chase our tails looking for her.

We were joined on the edge of the sign by another Pandora, who had been following along behind the two of us from a greater distance, just in case Sophia chose to hang back further than we thought.

"See anything, Lambda?" I asked the second Pandora as she dropped down on the other side of me.

She gave a quick nod. "Many things, Tether-Friend. I have seen buildings, people, cars..."

I rolled my eyes, nudging her with an elbow. "Sophia, I meant did you see Sophia?" She shook her head that time, and I sighed before lifting my arm to examine the new and improved Jalopy. He still looked pretty much like a wristband, though it had doubled in size. Riley had added several new features to help him defend me, as well as giving him a back-up energy source to use while I was sleeping and my movements were no longer charging him.

Most importantly, she had added an ability to sense the bio-manipulated arms that she and Panacea had created. It only worked within about a block or so at the moment, but Riley said they were working on ideas to increase the range. Either way, I'd be alerted if Sophia got anywhere near me as long as I had Jalopy and she had the arms. I'd raised the thought of Sophia coming after me without the arms, and Riley had said that was impossible. I pointed out that Sophia might not want to be seen in public with them, and the bio-tinker had scoffed that the rude girl shouldn't have stolen her project then.

I... was pretty sure I didn't want to push the issue after that. But at least it sounded like the crazy girl wouldn't be able to sneak up on me. If she ever decided to show herself at all.

"What do you think, buddy?" I asked the robot with a gentle poke. "Is Sophia chicken or what?"

Shifting into his spider form, Jalopy crawled from my arm to my shoulder and played a tiny bit from the old Kenny Rogers song, 'Coward of the County'.

"Damn straight, little guy." I held my finger up so that his grappler arm could poke against it as though he was giving me five. "If she wants a real fight, we'll give her one."

Lambda spoke up then. "She is probably afraid of being the better kind of peanut, Tether-Friend."

I blinked at that, trying to work out what she meant and failing. "The... better kind of peanut?"

She nodded sagely. "A salted."

"She's afraid of being a salted pe- a salted." I groaned as I got it, head hanging while Lambda gave me the closest thing to a genuine smile that any of the Pandoras had actually managed up to that point. "Damn it, they're right. You are the one that likes jokes."

"Yes, Tether-Friend." Iota spoke up from the other side of me. "Our Lambda-Self has discovered the existence of humor. Dinah-Friend says that we have a long way to go before we master it."

"Mastering anything requires practice," Lambda declared. "We have read that chicken crossing the road jokes are the most common that exist. So, Tether-Friend, what do you call a chicken crossing the road?"

"I guess Sophia attacking in the next three seconds is out of the question?" I asked, looking around hopefully. Finding nothing, I dropped my head. "Okay, what do you call a chicken crossing the road?"

"Poultry in motion." Lambda gave me another of her smiles, still a bit too toothy and intense, but at least recognizable for what it was supposed to be. She was clearly proud of herself.

I groaned so much I nearly fell off the billboard. "Poultry- wow, Lambda, you must study people a lot to even know why that's a joke."

"We work backwards." She admitted. "We enjoy looking for jokes, and then working away from them to discover why it is funny. In that case, we had to ask Dinah-Friend, who explained poetry. Lambda-Self does not care for it, but Sigma-Self has enjoyed many poems."

"Sigma likes poetry, huh?" I looked between them. "And Lambda likes jokes. Puns. I know Epsilon is the one obsessed with rules and order. What about you, Iota? What do you like?"

"Iota-Self enjoys movies. All movies, but mostly the movies with the explosions and the guns."

"Action movie buff, got it." I smiled in spite of myself. "At least I know what to get you for... oh god."

Both of the Pandoras looked at me, confused. They spoke as one. "What is wrong, Tether-Friend?"

"I just realized, if you guys ever figure out what your birthday should be, I'm gonna go broke getting your presents."

Lambda pounced on that. "Do not worry, Tether-Friend. It is your presence that we truly admire."

My groan at that one probably reached the street below us.

"You know what one of the best parts of being a hero instead of a villain is?" Marissa asked me a few hours later after the sun had gone down. We were both in costume, sitting on the roof of the library while we each took a break from our patrols.

"Not having to do terrible things to people that don't deserve it?" I guessed.

"Well that's a definite plus." Mars lifted the spoon out of her milkshake. "But I was referring to being able to go into a restaurant in costume and buy things without scaring people." She brought the ice cream to her mouth, her mask already pushed out of the way so that she could enjoy it. "Mmmm."

I giggled in spite of myself, taking a spoonful of my own shake after fixing my mask. "Yeah, I guess it's hard to visit McDonalds while you're being chased by the PRT."

"Oh it's not hard to visit." She smiled sidelong at me. "But people tend to make certain assumptions about what you're doing there. I can't tell you how many times I had to throw money back into the register while swearing that I wasn't robbing them, I just wanted a cheeseburger."

Snickering, I asked, "You know what I like about you being a hero now?"

Her head tilted curiously. "What's that?"

I used a line to pull her to me, carefully so that she wouldn't drop her cup. She gave a soft meep of surprise, but let herself be pulled until she was right in front of me. Once she was there, I released the line and put my hand on her side, rubbing gently. "It means I can do things like this." I leaned up onto my toes while using a hand to tug her down into a brief kiss. "Without feeling guilty."

Mars murmured with pleasure at the kiss before her free arm wrapped around my back. "Mmm, really? Because slacking off on patrol duty totally still makes me feel guilty."

I made a face at her. "Not slacking off. It's called a lunch break. Everyone takes them."

"True." She kissed me again, making me shiver for reasons entirely unrelated to the ice cream in my hand. "Plus there's the fact that Laserdream and Sparrow are still out there doing _**their**_ patrol."

Since Mika was still too young to patrol on her own, she was occasionally paired with a Protectorate member (in an official patrol pairing, rather than the way Mars and I just decided to stay together since were both out). Tonight was Crystal's turn. Which Sparrow was apparently ecstatic about, since she loved flying so much and Crystal was absolutely the best flier in the city.

"Yeah, they'll let us know if we miss anything for a few minutes." I tugged my spoon out of the shake and offered it to her. "Oreo mint?"

Mars practically purred while enjoying that bit of ice cream, and I shuddered as feelings I was even now still getting used to rushed through me. "Uhh wow, if you keep making noises like that, we're gonna have to get even further away from the street."

I sensed her blush as she shrugged. "I like ice cream. And I like you. So getting ice cream _**from**_ you is... mmmm. It's nice."

Letting out a long sigh of contentment while rubbing her side and back, I smiled. "I think spending any time with you at all is really nice. I... really like you. A lot."

Her reply was another kiss that went on for a few long (yet somehow not long enough) seconds. Then she drew back to take another bite of her own shake. "Okay, what would be your favorite exotic pet, disregarding laws or rules? But it has to actually exist and be alive now."

I didn't have to think about it. "Red Panda."

Mars blinked at that, clearly trying to picture what I was talking about. "They come in red? Is it the black part or the white part that's red?"

Gaping, I poked her in the stomach. "No way, you haven't seen red pandas? Oh man have I got some pictures to share with you. They're my favorite animal in the whole world." Curiously, I added, "What about you? What would your favorite exotic pet be? Same rules about existing."

"Penguin." She answered easily. "They look like they're all dressed up. But also because they look awkward on land, but they're really fast swimmers. It just reminds me that everyone has their element, even if they look completely out of place when you first see them."

I smiled at that and started to respond before blinking past her. "Chris?"

Mars looked decidedly confused. "Err, no, I don't think Chris is a penguin."

"No." I turned her around to look off the roof and down toward the sidewalk in front of the library. "Look, it's Chris. And he's with a girl." I pointed down to where my teammate stood, apparently chatting away with a pretty black girl who had one bleached streak of white in her otherwise dark hair.

"Oooh." Marissa considered the sight while taking another spoonful of ice cream. "She's cute. I mean, she'd be cuter without the trashy clothes that are just trying too hard to be edgy, but still. Who is she?"

I shook my head. "I have no idea. Chris never said anything about hanging out with a girl." Shrugging, I added, "I mean, he doesn't have to, I guess. It's not like we're super best friends or anything. Still, it looks like they're getting along. I wonder if they're dating or something."

"Wouldn't you think he'd mention if he was dating someone?" Marissa asked.

I shrugged at that. "Maybe he wants to keep his civilian life separate? Or maybe there's some other issue or reason he doesn't want to talk about it. I dunno. But spying like this feels weird."

Mars nodded in agreement and we stepped back, turning away from where Chris and the pretty black girl were so we wouldn't continue to be voyeurs.

Barely had we stepped back away from the edge of the roof, than two figures flew down out of the sky to land nearby. "See, Sparrow?" Laserdream was shaking her head in mock disappointment. "I told you when we found these two they'd be slacking."

I stuck my tongue out at her. "You're just jealous cuz you want ice cream."

"Got that right, now gimme." She winked, holding her hand out until I passed her the cup. "Yum. I'll say this for you, Tether, you have good taste in a lot of things."

I nudged Mars with my foot. "I like to think so." Looking toward Sparrow then, I added, "I take it you guys haven't seen much tonight either?"

"Nuthin!" Sparrow's bracelets lit up, and she floated up off the roof and turned upside down, hovering there with her glowing pink smiley face set against the black background of her costume. The face actually righted itself as she hung there so that it was right-side up even as she was upside down. It looked a bit like the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland, the way her dark costume blended into the night aside from the glowy bits. "We haven't seen aaaaaaaaaaanybody doing anything wrong. It's been sooooo boring. Cept Dreamy's been teaching me all kinda flying tricks."

"Dreamy?" I giggled, looking at Laserdream.

Snickering, Mars held her cup out to the girl floating upside down in front of her. "Here, take a bite, you poor bored little superhero."

"Eee!" Taking the cup, Sparrow carefully inverted in the air, floating there as she tugged the mask up a little bit. "Thank you, Miss Sundancer!"

Unfortunately, before Marissa could reply, and before Mika could take a bite, Jalopy abruptly began to glow dark green on my wrist while making a light humming noise. A second later he transformed back into his spider-bot form, and his grapple arm popped out to tug at my costume sleeve urgently.

"I got it, thanks, buddy." I gave him a quick pat while turning in a quick circle, scanning the street below.

"Does that mean what I think it means?" Marissa asked. She and the other two were staring at me.

I was probably going to have to explain exactly what Jalopy was to Mika, but that could wait. For now, I just nodded. "It means Sophia is somewhere within a block of here."

"Right." Crystal floated up to take a better look around. "I'll call it in."

My mouth opened to say something else, but before I could get another word out, a deafening alarm began to blare from right beneath my feet, making me jump.

"She's in the library!" Marissa called over the noise of the alarm. "There's still people in there!"

Mars was right. Jalopy was still dancing in agitation on my shoulder as he sensed Sophia's proximity. She was down in the library with all the people.

Which meant that we were going to have to go in there after her.

**20.05**

On the way down from the roof, I took my phone from the hidden pocket in my costume, sending a quick text to Kid Win to let him know what was going on and that we'd seen him nearby. I also let Reach, who was manning the console, in on what was happening.

Chris hadn't responded by the time we made it into the library through one of the back entrances. Crystal, meanwhile, had managed to get through to the Protectorate version of their console monitor and had the alarms in the library turned off so that they weren't deafening us. She also warned them to keep the local police away from the place until we cleared it, since the poor uniformed cops going up against an empowered and crazy Shadow Stalker was just begging for a tragedy.

The place was mostly dark as we entered, illuminated only by a few emergency lights (as well as the dim glow from both my and Sparrow's costumes). I hadn't really visited the library very often, but it looked like we had come into the children's section, judging by the brightly colored crayon drawings lining the walls, the tiny chairs scattered around, and the shelves full of books for kids. There was even a plastic castle in the middle of the area, ringed by reading chairs.

Without the alarm blaring, the place was eerily quiet, even for a library. The dim lighting made every little shadow seem ominous, and I had to restrain myself from jumping when Laserdream touched my arm before she whispered, "Can your little early warning system track her from in here?"

I shook my head. "Not yet. They're still working on refining it. Right now he can just tell when she's within a certain distance." As if to punctuate my words, Jalopy opened and shut his two little grappler hands a couple of times, turning in a circle on my shoulder as he scanned the room around us.

Not long ago, the dark room might have been a problem. Now I just pressed a semi-hidden button on the side of the mask and the area grew brighter as the tinker-designed night-vision kicked in. The lenses were designed to opaque whenever a bright enough flash happened, to prevent the wearer from going blind if a bright enough light suddenly popped on while they were using the night-vision.

I also turned down the glow of the lines on my costume so that it went almost completely dark. There was no sense in making myself even more of a target.

Sparrow activated the lenses in her own mask as well as turning down the glow on her costume when she noticed me doing so, while Laserdream made a small glowing forcefield and floated it ahead. The four of us began to leave the children's section, spacing ourselves out a bit to avoid being jumped all at once, yet staying within sight of one another.

Crystal stepped out of the kid's space first, looking left, then right before she beckoned us toward her. We stepped out and into the open area. To the right I could see a wide spiraling staircase leading up to what the nearby sign indicated was the computer lab and reference area. It wasn't really a whole floor so much as a sort of separate, higher loft-like area that overlooked the main floor that we were on. Meanwhile the young adult and teen section was to the left along with the checkout area.

"We should split up," Laserdream said aloud. "She's here somewhere. I'll look upstairs, you guys spread out to search the stacks down here."

Split up? I was in the midst of staring at the older girl, mouth opening to ask if she had completely lost her mind, when she lifted a finger to her lips to shush me. Putting a hand on my arm, she pulled me back against the nearest row of bookshelves with the other two. Then she leaned close and whispered under her breath, "Stay. Watch. Hand up-" She lifted my arm. "Drop it when you get anything."

Turning, she headed for the stairs, floating her forcefield bubble light source ahead. She took the steps at a steady, normal pace, with the forcefield several feet in front of her. With each step, she kept her head turned toward me, watching the very faint glow of my arm.

She was one step from the top when I saw the dark red line attach itself to her. The second I saw it pop up, I dropped my arm, and Crystal reacted instantly by throwing herself into the air an instant before we all heard the dull thunk of a crossbow bolt striking the railing where she had been standing.

Many people had called Laserdream the best flier in the city, but even that shortchanged her, I realized in that moment. I doubted many capes in the world could have pulled off the maneuver she did just then, launching herself toward the ceiling as though she had been shot out of a cannon, yet somehow managing to invert in midair, followed by twisting herself around into a roll sideways through the air. Two follow up crossbow bolts went sailing harmlessly past then, the first one through the space that her her initial lunge would have sent her if she hadn't inverted, and the second through the new space she occupied prior to her sudden twist and roll.

Jeeze, Crystal's reflexes and grace in midair were like nothing I had seen before. For an instant, I almost forgot myself and kept staring, even as she easily avoided yet another crossbow bolt _in the dark. _Then she pointed with one hand, sending a bolt of laser light that struck a single shadow perched on top of one of the tall bookshelves on the ground floor, about ten rows down from where the rest of us were. Even the way that my lenses brightened the area didn't take away from the formless shadow that was Sophia using her power. The whole area around her was one big blob of darkness, as though her power was somehow sucking the light out of the space it occupied. I knew light hadn't always reacted that way to her power, so was this some kind of reaction that the bio-engineered arms were having with it?

Crystal's laser wasn't enough to harm Sophia in her shadow-state, but it had done its job of telling us where she was. Jalopy made a move on my arm, but I stopped him quickly, whispering, "Not yet. Not until we see what she's got and what she's up to. Stay put until I give you the word, little guy." He obviously didn't like it, but returned to his wristband form anyway.

I saw the indistinct form of Sophia take aim with that crossbow again, but this time I was ready. I gripped the shelf she was perched on with a line and ripped it out from under her. The massive, ten foot tall bookcase was too sturdily built for the whole thing to fall, but the shelf she was actually standing on was torn out from under Sophia, throwing her forward and down. Her powers made her lightweight, but she was still at least somewhat subject to gravity. She might have fallen like a feather, but she still _fell._ And doing so brought her more into the open where we could see her.

"Oh my god." Marissa breathed next to me. "What did she do to herself?"

Sophia looked... different. Her entire body, rather than just her arms, was encased in what looked like a rippling pool of thick brown-black oil. Yet rather than a sexy, form-fitting look, the stuff actually made her appear skeletal, like there wasn't much more than bones beneath the surface. It reminded me a bit of the way the villain in some environmentalist rain forest cartoon movie from Aleph had looked early in that movie. She looked... wrong. Wisps of darkness seemed to drip off of her before being reabsorbed into the skeletal thin body.

She also had incredibly fast reflexes. As soon as Marissa spoke, I saw a faint red line connect to her. I barely had time to start getting a line to shove her away before Sophia had spun and lashed out with an arm. As she did so, a thick tentacle manifested, stretching out to smack Marissa in the chest and send her tumbling with a cry.

I threw myself into her path then, trusting one of the other two to check on Mars. "Well hey, a female Skeletor. It's good to know the new _He-Man _series is breaking ground on gender equality."

Her response was a snarled and drawn out, "Yoooou." Then she threw herself at me with speed that took me by surprise. One second she was standing there, and the next she was colliding with me with enough force to drive the air from my body. We went crashing past a row of bookshelves and into the darkness while Crystal shouted something from the air above and behind me.

Pain suddenly filled my shoulder as Sophia drove it backwards into the nearest shelf. It was also my first chance to get a good look at her face, and my eyes widened at the sight. The oily, bio-engineered stuff had even begun to cover her face. It didn't cover _all_ of it yet. Rather, jagged spikes of the stuff stretched up from the neck of the suit, almost like rows of uneven teeth that all along the lower half of her head and face. The tallest 'spike' reached the lowest part of her right eye, while the smallest one barely cleared her jaw on the left side. All of her mouth was covered, and when she spoke, the black, oily stuff actually parted to reveal what looked like a mouth that was full of rows and rows of sharp onyx fangs, layered like a shark's teeth.

"Why can't you just leave me alone?" She snarled with more loathing than I had ever imagined anyone actually feeling toward me. "I didn't come for you, I just needed the book! I didn't want you yet! I wanted the book, just the book!" With each word, she was shaking me more violently, her voice crazed.

Grimacing, I muttered, "I don't know about a book, but you could really use a visit to the dentist."

Her only response was to snarl and rear back with one skeletal fist. I was about to tell Jalopy to go ahead and have his rematch, when Sparrow's forcefield collided with Sophia instead, knocking her off of me and sending her flying.

She twisted in the air even as she was thrown, and a pair of oily tentacles lashed out from her sides to catch onto the bookshelves on either side to steady herself.

By that time, Sundancer had appeared at one end of the aisle. Even a month earlier, Marissa would have lacked the control to risk using her power indoors. Now, she stood with the smallest sun I had ever seen her make perched in the palm of her hand like a tiny glowing baseball. Actually embracing and learning to work _**with**_ her power instead of always fighting against it had given Mars the skill to actually reduce its size down to the point that she could trust its heat to stay right where she wanted it, even with all the books and wood lying around in here. It was a testament to how much work she had been putting into her Protectorate training. Or how shitty of a leader and trainer Trickster actually was.

Meanwhile, Laserdream floated down into view at the other end, and Sparrow hovered above the stacks, her forcefield staff held tightly in one hand.

"It's over, Shadow Stalker." Crystal informed her. "Just calm down and we'll get that... thing off you."

Instead, Sophia just let out a scream of frustration. I saw the warning lines pop up, and this time I was able to put my own tethers on Laserdream and Sundancer, shoving them backwards just as the tentacles holding either bookshelf heaved, pitching one toward each of the two Protectorate members.

Sparrow flew down, throwing a wild punch at Sophia's back. Unfortunately, she had already returned to her shadow-state, and the blow went right through her. I saw the warning line appear again, and launched myself that way to snatch Sparrow out of the way just as two more of the tentacles grabbed for her. We rolled, and I came to my feet just as yet another tentacle caught my ankle and yanked me back to where Sophia was.

I used a line against the floor to launch myself up and over the crazy girl, using the momentum of her yanking me rather than fighting against it. The tentacle was taken off guard and the force was able to pull me free of it as I flew nearly to the ceiling.

Before I could adjust my fall, Sophia was in the air. She had launched herself upward, colliding with me so that we crashed down onto the second floor loft area where the computer lab was. My back slammed into one of the computer monitors, sending it to the floor a second before I joined it, falling onto my back with a cry.

Sophia was perched on top of the table where the monitor had been. She reared back with a fist and I rolled aside just as two of her tentacles lashed through the floor where I'd been lying. They weren't just blunt. Rather, they seemed to have formed themselves into blades, and each of them sliced through the floor like it was paper.

Avoiding her attempt to slice me in thirds didn't do wonders for Sophia's temperament. She let out a frustrated scream, and at least three more of the bladed tentacles lashed out at me. I evaded two of them by throwing myself into a sideways roll, and blocked the other by attaching a line to a nearby computer table and yanking it into the tentacle's path to knock it off course.

"Why won't you _**leave me alone?!**_" Sophia bellowed. "This is your fault! It's all your fault! I didn't want to hurt anyone. You made me! You stole my life, you stupid—" Her words devolved into an inarticulate scream. Then she reached into her... chest... her hand actually shoving past the shadow-oil that made up her skeletal-thin body, and ripped back out a moment later, now holding her crossbow. It was dripping with that shadow-oil stuff that returned to her body with each drop that hit the floor. I had a moment of delayed shock and disgust at the fact that she was somehow able to store her weapon inside what was left of her body, wondering just what this fucking _**stuff **_that Panacea and Riley had made was **doing** to her, before she aimed at me and launched a bolt. I had to use a line to augment my backwards roll into a flip that got me airborne to avoid it.

Activating my comm to the other three, I said quietly, "Let me handle this. Stay out of the way unless you have to." Then I spoke louder, addressing the crazy girl. "You know what, Sophia?" I asked while planting myself against the nearest wall, using a pair of lines to hold myself near the ceiling. "Sure, fine, whatever. Everything that happened to you is obviously my fault. But _**this**_ asskicking you're about to get? This one's all Jalopy."

"Sic her, boy."

Sophia froze in obvious confusion as I said that, even as the little robot shifted from wristband to spider-form, launching himself off my wrist to land on the nearby table between the two of us.

She began to laugh darkly then, staring at the tiny spider-bot. "What exactly do you think..."

Her words trailed off then, as a few familiar strong beats of music filled the air. I smiled inwardly at my bodyguard's song choice. It was another Queen hit, which he seemed to favor.

"You hear that, Sophia?" I called to her while the song got warmed up. "Another One Bites The Dust. I think that pretty much sums you up."

She snarled and sent a pair of tentacles lashing out that way. At the exact same instant, the actual lyrics of the song began with 'Let's go', and Jalopy hurled himself off the desk. He landed on the nearest tentacle even as it slashed through the table that he had been perched on. A high pitched whining sound joined the music as a pair of tiny buzz-saws emerged from the underside of the tiny robot's body, cutting the outstretched tentacle off. It fell to the floor before turning back into an oily puddle while Jalopy jumped to the next tentacle. The oily-shadow puddle on the floor tried to return to where Sophia's body was, but Jalopy pointed a grapple arm at it, and a small pellet launched out of a compartment there. The pellet burst in the air just above the fallen tentacle, sending out a spray of what looked like liquid nitrogen to freeze the thing solid and trap it in place.

The second tentacle was slashed off by the little buzz-saws, before Jalopy launched himself back into the air. Sophia screamed while aiming her crossbow. The bolt shot out at him, but the little guy used one of his grappler arms to snatch it out of the air in mid-flight and broke it in half even as his other arm launched another of those liquid nitrogen pellets to freeze the second severed tentacle before it could slither back to rejoin its host.

Sophia was back pedaling now, shouting incoherently as she lashed out with half a dozen tentacles and as many crossbow bolts as she could fire, filling the air one after another even as she flailed randomly.

Yet it didn't matter. _**Somehow **_that one tiny little spider-bot seemed to be everywhere at once. He intercepted the crossbow bolts either by catching and snapping them, or by using small laser that emerged from the center of his body to burn through them. One tentacle after another was severed and frozen.

The tentacles themselves were being cut down to the actual tune of the music. The 'bite the dust' lyrics actually matched up with each tentacle that was severed and frozen, and the little bot was just avoiding her retaliation strikes when the lyrics didn't match the way that he wanted them to. He was jumping all around her, from ahead of her to behind, and to either side.

Okay, now he was showing off.

In the end, Sophia stood bent over, back pressed against the far wall as she panted for breath. The bio-engineered stuff that had covered her body had been reduced down to even more of a skeleton as she stood there. It was like there was only very small bits of her actual body **left** that wasn't part of the shadow-oil ooze that had obviously resulted from her powers interacting with the arms.

"You... you... you..." She tried to find the words in between gasping for breath from the exhaustive workout that the little robot had put her through. Her crossbow was empty, and she didn't have enough bio-mass for any more tentacles. Finally, she let out one last scream and pivoted. Her form turned indistinct as she lunged for the nearby wall to make her escape.

And that was when Jalopy triggered his trap. Because he actually _hadn't _just been showing off when he was jumping behind Sophia and onto every side of her. He had also been using those moments to lay a line of wire across the wall. When Sophia used her shadow-state to try to flee, he activated it. Sophia hurled herself into a live wire and screamed out loud in agony as she was thrown backwards, hitting the ground while twitching and spasming while she shifted back into her solid form.

"K-Ki-kill me then. Ki-kill me." She continued twitching while glaring at me as I approached to stand over her. "You know you w-want to. Ge-get it over wi-with. I'm your ne-nemesis, all th-that. Do it. Do i-it!"

Jalopy jumped to my arm, then settled on my shoulder while I stood staring down at Sophia's twitching body. I thought of my parents, of what she had done to them, and my fist tightened.

But then I thought of my parents' _**lives**_, rather than their deaths. I thought about what they would have wanted, rather than what my revenge-obsessed psyche wanted.

"Nemesis?" I asked quietly. "Actually, to tell you the truth, Sophia, I don't really think about you all that much anymore."

She let out one last snarl and tried to lunge up toward me with what remained of her strength. I reflexively kicked out at her face, nailing her solidly and sending her back to the floor. This time, she slumped and didn't move again.

"But I won't say that didn't feel good."

**Interlude 20 – Clepsydra**

Three... two... one...

The silent countdown stopped, and the eighteen-year old girl's eyes opened. The clock that had been nailed into the ceiling above her head stared down at her, confirming that the time was precisely seven in the morning. She woke literally as the second and minute hands had touched the number twelve.

She had outgrown the clock some time ago, having come to trust her power to keep track of time for her. It was a relic from when she was still learning what she was capable of. She kept it around for sentimental reasons, and to remind herself that, as accustomed to her power as she was now, it hadn't always been that way. She'd had to learn, had to practice and come to trust that her power was right.

Closing her eyes after a few seconds, the girl who had begun to call herself Clepsydra focused on that power. _I want to stand in two minutes._ In her head, a one hundred and twenty second countdown began.

Now assured that she wouldn't focus too long and end up being late, Clepsydra turned her focus toward her remaining active mental clocks. She held dozens of them in her head at any given time, though most simply ticked the time away silently until she chose to focus on them, or their time ran out. The shortest of the dozens of countdowns she was running at the moment was down to one minute, twenty seconds (the time that her neighbor would begin to blare his annoying music through the walls), while the longest was still at ten months, two weeks, three days, sixteen hours, fifty-eight minutes, and twelve seconds (the time that her neighbor's lease would run out so that she could buy his apartment and stop that annoying music from ever bothering her again). Or maybe she'd just buy the entire building, bulldoze it, and have an office tower built where it had been, with a penthouse at the top for herself.

That, of course, might make it hard to maintain the appearance of an average college student that she'd been keeping up so far.

Right on cue, as its mental countdown reached zero, the wall behind the girl's head began to vibrate heavily under the assault of the pounding rap music that passed for her neighbor's wake-up call. Thirty-two seconds after that, her two minute mental clock ran down. The instant it did, the girl's legs swung around and she stood up without any input from her conscious mind.

Once she was standing, Clepsydra found herself facing the mirror attached to her closet door and took a moment to examine herself. Brown hair that she'd recently had cut into a short pixie style framed a pale face that others had called noble-looking with its high, defined cheekbones and deep green eyes. In school, people had mockingly called her a vampire because of her pale skin and aristocratic appearance. Some had said it with affection, while others had been jealous.

Turning away from the mirror, the girl thought to herself, _I want to walk to the bathroom and take a warm shower for exactly twelve minutes, including scrubbing and hair washing and conditioning. _

The mental clock and programmed actions were set, and she tuned out of her own actions, trusting her power to make her body follow what she'd ordered so that she could daydream.

It was hard to believe that as early as four months ago, she hadn't had this power. She had become so accustomed to her mental countdowns that it sometimes seemed as though she'd always been this way.

But no, not so very long ago, her life had been very different...

_Four months earlier._

"Right, so now you've seen the vials. You want one, fork over the money. Forty-five thousand."

The girl who would eventually call herself Clepsydra was, in that moment, still just Haley Prescott. She was also completely out of her element. "You said it was thirty-five thousand online." She kept her voice low, even though no one was likely to hear them. The man who called himself the Dealer had set up their meeting in the back alley behind a pool hall. Drug deals going down back here were nothing new, and people had long since learned that it was healthier not to pay too much attention.

If only they knew just how out of the ordinary this particular 'drug' deal was.

The Dealer, a dark-skinned man in his late forties, who was clearly clinging to his youth with his earring and colorful Hawaiian shirt, snapped the metal case shut, cutting Haley's gaze off from the vials that had lined the interior. "Yeah, that was the price down in Tallahassee. You make me come all the way up here to fucking New Hampshire, and you get a ten thousand dollar convenience fee. You got a problem with that, take your business to my competitor." The man paused for several dramatic seconds to make his point, before snapping his fingers loudly. "Oh wait, I ain't got no competitor. So here's the deal, forty-five thousand or I walk away and find someone who ain't a little sixteen-year old bitch with Daddy's credit card. Oh, and speaking of which, cash only."

"My father's dead." Haley snapped. "And I'm eighteen, not sixteen."

The man was unimpressed. "So you got the money or not? Cuz I got other places to be."

"How do I know this stuff is real before I pay you?"

Rolling his eyes, the Dealer explained, "My business works on word-of-mouth. You know what'll happen if my customers start saying they took my shit and nothing happened? No more business."

Debating with herself inwardly for another moment, Haley finally gave a short nod and reached into the brown shopping bag held tightly in her other hand. One by one, she pulled out stacks of five thousand dollars. One hundred dollar bills, fifty to a stack, nine stacks in all.

She'd come with more than that, having been prepared for the man to go as high as eighty thousand. It was almost all of the money that her father had given her before he was killed.

The Dealer took his time examining the cash to ensure its validity before he finally opened the case once more. "Pick your poison. You get one vial. And don't take it here. Wait til you get somewhere safe, cuz this stuff'll knock you out for a bit." He wasn't _quite_ openly leering. "Wouldn't want anything to happen to you in this neighborhood."

For a moment, Haley let her gaze run over the dozen vial-containing canisters that remained inside the case. There were five spots where more canisters had been before the man had sold them off.

"What's this mean?" She asked, pointing to what looked like an upside down Greek Omega symbol that was set into the inside of the lid.

The Dealer heaved a sigh of annoyance. "Means pick a vial or lose your chance, kid. Clock's ticking."

Running her hands over the remaining canisters, Haley finally selected one at random and pulled it out. "Got it." She turned the canister over in her hands, staring at the vial inside curiously, as though a close enough look would somehow tell her what it was going to do.

"Whoopity doo." The Dealer snapped the case shut, picking up the sack he had put the money in. "Unless you wanna buy a matching vial and wear 'em like earrings, go away. I've got other business."

Taking her chosen canister and shoving it down deep into the shopping bag that still held thirty-five thousand dollars, along with her cell phone, apartment keys, and identification, Haley walked back out of the alley, trying to look as natural and calm as possible.

That became a lot harder to do when the ground itself suddenly shook violently underneath her while a deafening boom rolled through the street, setting off car alarms for blocks all around.

Haley's head jerked to the side, staring at the sight of flames erupting from a building nearby. For a moment, she just stared uncomprehendingly, before another series of explosions from further down the street shocked her into back pedaling into the alley once more.

Turning, she saw the Dealer climbing into his car. "Hey!" She called out to him. "Hey help me get out of here, there's... there's bombs! You've gotta help me!"

"Sorry, babe." The man shrugged while starting his car. "Our business is done." He pulled out of the alley, accelerating around her while she shouted ineffectually at him to stop.

The bombs continued, while Haley stood frozen in the alley, unable to make herself move. She slowly sank down to a kneeling position, cradling herself as she half-hid behind the dumpster that was set against the fence, as though it could shield her. The terror and confusion that she felt grew with each passing explosion. They seemed to come at no particular interval or distance, some happening so close that the shock wave rattled her teeth, while others could have been distant thunder. There was no way of knowing where the next one would happen.

She huddled back there in the relative (and probably imagined) safety of the alley for a couple of hours, too terrified to move and risk putting herself where more bombs could happen. She _**had**_ planned on taking the bus back to her apartment, but that was out of the question now. Sirens echoed through the streets while police and other emergency services raced from one tragic scene to another. And the whole while, Haley crouched in that back alley, trying not to cry from the fear.

Finally, her eyes closed and she thought of her dad. Not the fraud who had raised her, but her _real _father, the man she hadn't known about until a year before his death.

Then again, she _had_ known his alter ego pretty much all her life. It would have been all-but impossible to live in Brockton Bay and **not** know about the man called Kaiser.

Haley had always believed that she was meant for something far more than the average life that she had been born into. She disdained most of the students her own age, believing that they were blind children who didn't look far enough into the future.

Her ambition had led to frequent arguments with her parents, who were content to drink themselves into a coma each day, year in and year out. The arguments were mainly with her mother, and often turned into screaming matches. It was during one of these around a year earlier that Haley had finally learned that the man who called himself her dad actually had no relation to her. In actuality, Max Anders had knocked her mother up when they were both teenagers and paid her (or more likely, his father had paid) to keep quiet about it.

After that day, her instinct about being meant for greater things proven right, Haley had spent weeks trying to get in to see her birth father at his fancy office. Finally, she had unexpectedly found him waiting for her in the dingy little college dorm that she had been staying in. He'd been pleasant and charismatic enough, though he'd made no secret of the fact that he didn't want their relationship getting out, and that he had no interest in being a real father to her. Instead, he had offered to pay for her college tuition, as well as handing over a hundred thousand dollars as a 'missed birthday' fund that was obviously a bribe to keep her away from DNA tests and news reports.

She'd taken the money, reasoning that doing so didn't exactly preclude her from asking for more when the time came. Yet a few months later her birth father had died. At the same time, the truth about his secret identity had been revealed not only to Haley, but to the world at large. Max Anders was actually Kaiser, the leader of the infamous Empire Eighty-Eight.

No wonder he hadn't wanted anyone looking into his biology too much.

Most people probably would have been horrified to know that their father was a supervillain. For Haley, it was simply confirmation that she was meant to be more than average. She was meant to accomplish great things. She hadn't known what those things were before, when she had been drifting aimlessly, but in the wake of her birth father's death and revelation, she knew what she was meant for.

She would return his Empire to its former glory, and tear down those who had taken it away from him. Not with the racism, because honestly, anyone who really believed in that stuff was an idiot. But the _**power**_ and influence of Max Anders's criminal Empire would live on. It would be reborn in spirit, cleansed of former obsessions like race that had held it back from achieving the greatness that her father had clearly been capable of, if he hadn't let himself be distracted by some stupid racism.

Of course, the first step to regaining her father's power had been to get some **real** power of her own. A hundred thousand dollars and a paid-off college tuition was nice, but neither were enough for any real influence. No, she needed power. First she had thought about some kind of tinker-made suit that could protect her. But then she had heard about this so-called Dealer down in Florida who could provide people with vials that would grant them powers.

She'd taken the risk, and now she had what was supposed to be a power-giving vial in her bag. Yet she was still helpless, still cowering in a corner while bombs tore up the city.

Her real father would be ashamed of her.

That was enough to get Haley up and moving. She thought briefly of taking the vial then and there, but decided against it. Assuming the Dealer had been telling the truth about it knocking her out, it would probably be a bad idea to be unconscious in an alley while all this was going on. She needed to get somewhere safe first.

Finally hurrying out of the dark alley, she looked up and down the street before joining a crowd that was rushing somewhere. Maybe they would find a safe place where she could lock herself in a restroom or something and take the vial.

As she was running with the crowd, someone jostled Haley and knocked the bag from her hand. Eyes widening, she spun back and fought her way through the crowd to get to where it had fallen next to a city utilities truck.

Three steps from reaching the fallen bag, there was a sudden rush of movement, and a figure dropped into view in front of Haley. Recoiling in surprise, she cursed reflexively before blinking. "Hey! You're-"

Tether, the newest Ward, caught her by the arm and launched the two of them off the ground. All Haley could do was stare in panic down at the bag that was being left behind while the costumed cape replied, "Oh my god, are you really 'that girl with the shopping bag'? Eeee, I totally have to get your autograph. My friends are **never** gonna believe I met you!"

Before Haley could even try to respond to that, the utility van below them exploded, blowing a crater into the street around itself, and utterly destroying the all-important bag.

She stared at the crater, mouth working with shock. "You... you..."

Tether tried to reassure her. "It's all right. I'm just trying to help. Are you-"

Spinning back to her, Haley blurted, "You could have grabbed my bag!" Gone. All her money, and the vial of super powers that would have allowed her to achieve her _destiny_ was _**gone**_. "Seriously, how hard would it have been to get my bag?" She demanded, feeling cheated and frantic. "It's like half a second! Do you have any idea how much that-" She barely restrained herself from saying 'vial of super powers'. "-cost? Not to mention my phone, my keys, my-" My life. My future.

Tether clearly didn't care. "Would you look at the time?" She mimed looking at a watch on her hand. "Listen, I'd love to stay, but you know... so many girls to deliberately separate from their toys, so little time."

Then she was gone, abandoning Haley on top of the roof to run off and play superhero some more.

For a few minutes, Haley simply stood there and tried not to weep at what had been ripped so unfairly away from her. She tilted her head back and screamed out loud, her cry meaning nothing against the thousands of others that filled the city in the wake of so much destruction.

Shr screamed three more times, finally slamming her hands down on the brick wall that surrounded the edge of the roof before her eyes abruptly landed on an overturned car about a block away.

She knew the car. She knew the license plate. It was a rental, and the person who had rented it had driven away hours earlier and left her panicked and alone in the alley.

It was the car that the Dealer had been driving.

Keeping her eyes on that overturned vehicle, Haley used the fire escape and rushed down to the street. She ran all the way to the car, dropping to her knees to peer inside.

The man was there, blood covering his face and shirt. He opened his eyes when Haley appeared, and gave her a weak smile. "Girl, you got no idea how glad I am to see you. Get me outta here, huh?"

For a second, Haley knelt there and debated with herself. Then she reached inside the car... and took his metal suitcase.

"Hey!" The man's protest was weak, his consciousness clearly failing him. "What... the hell you doing? I'm gonna die, bitch. Get me... outta here... help... me..."

Hand tight on the handle of the case, Haley knelt there and stared at the slowly dying man. A lump formed in her throat, and she nearly helped him. In the end, however, she remembered what he had said to her when she was the one that wanted help and straightened. Her last words to him before turning to walk away with the metal briefcase full of power-giving vials were, "Sorry babe, our business is done."

_Present Day_

After leaving the bathroom once she was cleaned and dressed, Haley, who called herself Clepsydra, walked into the small kitchen of the apartment. Her eyes fell on the phone lying on the counter, and she asked herself, _time until it rings?_ A one minute and fifty second countdown appeared in her head. From there, she turned to the door and asked herself, _time until someone knocks?_ This time, she got nothing but mental fog. That meant that no one would be knocking for at least ten minutes, which was as far as her limited time-based precognition worked. She could focus on a single person or object and ask herself a question related to when something related to that target would happen. If it was within ten minutes, she would get an exact countdown. If not, she got nothing.

Stepping to the counter, she began to pour herself a bowl of cereal. When the relevant countdown had nearly reached zero, she reached out and picked up the phone. Her thumb hit the answering button the very nanosecond that it began to ring. "Hello."

"God, it's still fucking creepy when you do that." The man on the other end complained.

"Sorry." She wasn't. "What happened, Duelitist?"

"You know, you could call me Brent when we're out of costume. Not that you have a costume yet. Why is that, by the way? You just let me play at being the leader of our little Outliars. Don't you want the glory?"

"I'll live." She was content to let the PRT think he was the one behind the group. In actuality, she had been the one who began what became the Outliars, by giving Brent and Camara, the first pair who had actually shown up with the money that she had quietly been asking for, two of the vials that had been in the case. Subsequently, they had taken the names of Duelitist and Scintillant.

Those two had been test cases. She'd needed the hundred thousand dollars that they had provided to get her own goals off the ground. The remaining members of the Outliars had been natural capes, drawn to Brockton Bay by the tide of violence and the collapse of the Empire.

Before she could put a **better** version of her father's company back on the map, she needed an army. The vials were a way of getting that army, yet she didn't want to give them all away at once. Just having a couple of people with powers had drawn _natural _capes to her fledgling group. They had acted as seeds, and even more had come. Eventually, she would find people she **trusted**, lieutenants that she would give powers to and groom. They would be more than the thugs that the Outliars were seen as.

Brent hesitated then before pushing on. "Anyway, I wanted to ask... about Camara. I could get her out myself, but that'd be it for my cover. I'd be on the run."

"Scintillant shouldn't have let herself be captured by a couple of Wards." Haley snapped before calming herself. "But I told you that we'd get her out, and we will. I just have to set up the right timing for it. What about Shadow Stalker?"

"Protectorate's got her locked up tight. No chance we could get to her. Not even with my clearance. You uhh... you want us to trigger that bomb?"

She thought about it for a moment, wondering what her father would have done. Finally, she shook her head. "Not yet. She could still be useful, especially if we get a hold of that suit she managed to attach to herself. What about Noelle, Luke, and Oliver? How are they doing without Trickster around to keep them calm?"

"They're not happy. Especially the monster bitch," Brent replied. "You really think we can cure her?"

"I know we can." Haley smiled faintly to herself. "Or rather, I knew the group around Pandora could, given the right motivation. We provided them with the vial they needed to make the cure. Now we have to get that vial back and make Noelle believe that we were instrumental in curing her."

"So uhh, sending Trickster and Shadow Stalker off to get Pandora, you didn't expect anything to come of that?"

She laughed out loud at that. "No, Trickster just annoyed me. And he has far too much influence over Noelle, influence that we need to have if any of this is going to work after we get that cure to her. But I couldn't very well have any of us kill him. I assumed Pandora would handle the job. I'll have to... think about what to do about him and Shadow Stalker being in custody."

"You think he'll squeal about you?"

Haley shook her head. "If he did, he can't tell them much besides the fact that I exist. He never saw me in person. No, I think we can still get some use out of this situation. I just need to think about how to do it."

"And in the meantime..."

Rolling her eyes, she poured the milk into her cereal. "In the meantime, we'll work on getting Scintillant out of custody, yes."

"Great." Brent sounded happy then. "And hey, you really should think about that whole costume thing. You'd look so good in a skintight outfit. Mmmhmmm."

"Maybe another time." Haley restrained the urge to snap at the man. He and his Outliars were the closest thing she had to an army for now.

"Okay, but I still don't see why you don't want anyone to know that you're a part of all this."

Smiling at her cereal, the girl gave a shrug that the man couldn't see as she replied, "Let's just say that for now..." She thought back to her interaction with Tether during the night of the explosions.

"... I'm content to be just another face in the crowd."


	21. Arc 21: Warfare

_**Notes:** __Moka-girl - The lack of scene-break lines is because ffn eats my simple asterisks when I post it. I need to go alllllll the way back through and switch the asterisk spots with the horizontal lines that ffn uses. That's a project I will undertake eventually. For now, I did switch the horizontal lines in with this latest chapter, so we'll see how that works. _

_Imageination - Duelitist's 'pal' seen early on will show up again. ;) _

_HellKing666 - Yeah, the exact scene of Haley meeting Tether is from the first part of Arc 5. Now we know why she was so upset about that bag. ;) And yeah, I have definitely never seen anything about Misaka clones or even heard of them before now. Glad you like it, in any case. ;) _

**21.01**

"So, do you think this wall is going to combust or something after we finish painting it?" Dennis asked casually as he pushed the paint roller up in a long, smooth motion, covering more of the dull off-white color with a pretty pale blue. "I mean, your bedroom's on the other side, right?"

I paused and squinted at the boy from where I was standing beside Lily and Hunter, trying to work out where he was going with that. "I give up, what does that have to do with anything?"

Three days had passed since Jalopy had brought down Sophia, and neither the PRT or PCIPS agents who interrogated her or Trickster had had any more luck in figuring out who they were working for, or where the other Travelers were. They also hadn't figured out how to remove the organic suit from Sophia without killing her, considering how literally attached to her body it was.

Dipping the roller back into the paint, Dennis looked over his shoulder back to us. "Well you know, Hunter's going for the nice, simple and elegant blue. Whereas your walls are..."

"Interesting?" I offered. "Colorful and sparkly? Fun? I will accept any and all synonyms for exciting."

"It's definitely colorful." Dennis agreed. "I just think the contrast of your... what do you call it?"

"Spiraling tie-dye glitter rainbow sunrise." I informed him, trying to sound as prim as possible.

"Spiraling tie-dye glitter rainbow sunrise," he echoed. "I think the contrast of that attached to the same wall that this," Dennis indicated the simple blue. "Might just cause some kind of implosion."

"I like her bedroom walls." Lily put in with a shrug as she slipped past me to take one of the paint brushes so she could work on the trim for the opposite wall. "They're exciting."

"See?" I grinned and patted Lily on the back. "She totally gets it." Glancing toward Hunter, I added, "Not that there's a problem with being simple. It's just not me."

Hunter just shrugged and gave me a slight smile before tapping a few buttons on her computer pad. The voice spoke up for her with, "I like simple."

"Plus your walls'll look like the sky when this is all done." Dennis realized as he stepped back to examine his work. "Which... was totally on purpose, wasn't it?" When she gave a hesitant nod, he looked back to it. "That'll look great."

Blushing at that, Hunter attached her computer pad to her belt, then stepped over to pick up the second roller so that she could work alongside the red-haired boy. As I watched, she glanced over to see what he was doing, then looked away shyly when he turned to see what she wanted, her blush deepening. Dennis's mouth opened like he was going to ask something, but in the end he just exhaled and made another stroke of the roller.

While I rolled my eyes at their little dance and heaved a silent, exasperated sigh of my own, Lily moved next to me. She leaned in close to whisper under her breath so that the other two wouldn't hear, "So, how's the plan of getting those two to admit they like each other going?"

I blinked sidelong at her and whispered back, "I don't remember telling you about that plan."

"You didn't have to." She winked at me. "You're not as subtle as you think you are." Her hand waved toward Dennis and Hunter. "And _**they're**_ even less subtle than that."

"What's all the whispering about back there?" Dennis was squinting at the two of us suspiciously. "Are you guys plotting our demise or what?"

I snorted at that and gave him a thumbs up. "Yup, you caught us. Totally plotting how to kill you both and take over your lives. We're thumb wrestling over which one of us gets stuck with yours."

He made a wounded noise and put his free hand against his chest. "That hurts, Maddy, right here. I'll have you know most people would love to take over my life."

Snickering in spite of myself, I waved a hand. "Sure, Dennis, have your delusions." Ignoring his sputtering, I stepped over to where Hunter was and poked her. "I bet we could get some wispy white clouds mixed into the blue to it's even more like the sky."

Her head bobbed in a quick nod before she pointed up at the ceiling and made a few quick wiggling motions with her fingers.

"Sure, we can get some stars up there too, no problem."

Lily looked back and forth between us. "You understood what she meant just from this?" She duplicated Hunter's finger wiggle.

I made a show of shaking my head while teasing the other girl. "No see, she said 'we need stars on the ceiling'. You just said 'I'm clearly suffering from terrible nerve damage in my hand.'"

There was a brief knock at the doorjamb before Sam stuck her head in. "Who's got nerve damage?"

Lily was huffing at me before glancing that way. "Nobody, Mrs. O'Connell. Madison's just a brat."

"Please, please just stick with Sam, Lily. So business as usual then." Sam stepped into the room, taking a look around. "Nice, I like the blue. It's not as crazy as what Maddy went with."

"Philistine." I sniffed. "Lily likes my walls. So does Ethan."

"Ethan still likes cramming himself full of cotton candy and then going on those rides at the fair that spin you around really, really fast." Sam pointed out. "He doesn't exactly do quietly elegant."

"Cotton candy's the best," I informed her before asking, "I don't suppose they got anything out of the two stooges today?"

Her head shook at that. "Nope, Shadow Stalker's still refusing to cooperate at all, and Trickster's playing his games. Giving false information and then acting surprised when it doesn't pan out. He won't even play ball with Jess or Marissa. It's just one lie after another."

Setting her roller down, Hunter turned to me and frowned thoughtfully. Putting two fingers out like legs, she mimed walking away.

I shook my head at that. "Even Krouse can't be delusional enough to think that he can just walk away from all this." Hunter repeated the gesture, except this time she hooked the finger of her other hand around the two fingers that made up her simulated 'legs' as though carrying them away. That time I nodded. "Though he might think that someone else will get him out, yeah."

"Who could he think has the kind of pull to yank him out of this level of custody?" Dennis demanded. "The only reason he's not in the Birdcage already is the information they want about Noelle."

"Which is exactly why he's not telling us anything." Sam sighed. "Because he knows that's the only thing keeping him where whoever his contact is **might** be able to get to him."

"Well, that and loyalty to Noelle." I pointed out. "Whatever else you can say about him, Mars and Jess both say that he'd do anything for her. Even really, really stupid things, repeatedly."

"No he won't." Sam's voice was firm. "He might think that he'd do anything for her, but that's just words. The most important thing he could do for that girl now is admit that he was wrong. And that's something he refuses to do. If he'd just admit that he fucked up and kept making things worse, we could all _**help**_ Noelle, or at least try to. But if he admits that, he has to accept that it was his fault, that he isn't her savior, and he won't. So no, he won't do 'anything' for her. He'll do 'anything' as long as he still gets to be right. That's not love. It's obsession."

I heaved a long sigh. "I hope they figure out a way to make him talk soon. From what Mars and Jess said, Noelle could get really upset if he's not around. And an upset Noelle could be bad for everyone."

* * *

><p>The next day I was walking down the hall at school between first and second period when a voice called for my attention, "Hey Madison, check this out." Chris was beckoning me over from where he stood by some lockers with a couple other sophomore boys.<p>

Blinking at his call, I stepped over that way. "Err, what's up?"

"Hey, badass unicorn shirt." One of the boys gave me a mocking thumbs up. "Did it come with the glitter or did you have to add that yourself?"

Chris kicked his foot. "Don't be a dick, Roy."

"Oh don't worry about it, Chris." I said sweetly. "If I had a quarter for every person who thought I cared about their opinion on my clothing choices, I could afford to have just how little I do etched onto the moon with a laser."

"Oooh, it's got teeth with the glittery unicorn shirt." One of the other boys remarked. "Watch out, Roy. What're you, a Freshman?"

I _barely_ restrained myself from scowling. "I'm a junior, and I'm not **that** small." Looking toward Chris while the other boys reacted to that, I asked, "Did you need something, or did you just want to let your friend give some fashion advice?"

"Chris thinks his lab partner ripped me off." The boy who had asked if I was a Freshman replied for him. "But I say he's crazy and it's the real deal."

"What's real?" I asked, looking back and forth between them.

"Oh, just this." Chris nudged the locker with his foot, making it swing open.

I nearly choked at what I saw. On the inside of the door was a poster of me. Or rather, a poster of Tether. It was one of the public relations shots that they made us do, that I had thus far done my level best to forget about. "Uh, oh, umm..."

"I know, awesome huh?" The boy was grinning as he reached up to point at some words that had been written toward the bottom of the poster, running his fingers along them proudly.

I read aloud, 'To Aisha, my coolest friend.'" It was signed by 'Tether.' Blinking, I asked, "Who's Aisha?"

"Yo." A new voice spoke up, and I turned to see the pretty black girl with the streak of white in her dark hair that Chris had been talking to outside of the library. "Sup?" She lifted her chin to me before looking past us at the poster. "Aww, you hung it up already, Jack." Her head shook with regret. "Man, I shouldn't have let you talk me out of it."

"Hey," the proud owner of the poster, Jack apparently, pointed at her. "No take-backs. We agreed, fifty bucks and I get the poster. Not my fault if you get seller's remorse."

I had to do a double take at that. "Fifty bucks?" I'd seen all the official Wards posters that size selling for about ten dollars each. "Isn't that a little bit much?"

"That's what I said." Chris was eying Aisha pointedly. "But you know, **somebody** insisted that the signature makes it worth a lot more than normal."

The other girl just smiled enigmatically. "Hey, it had sentimental value. You saw what it said. 'To my coolest friend.' Besides, there's not a lot of Tether-signed merch out there. Scarcity breeds worth."

Jack shut his locker then. "Chris still thinks you ripped me off or something."

Aisha made an obvious show of gasping, pressing a hand against her chest in mock surprise. "Rip him off? Now, is that how trusted lab partners should treat each other? Where's the trust?"

"Yeah, dude." Jack pushed off his locker and reached into his pocket. "Besides, I'm not stupid. I made sure to get the certificate of authenticity." He pulled a folded paper out and held it up for us to read.

Chris leaned close. "This document certifies that the enclosed is an official PRT sanctioned and verified poster of the Ward hero known as Tether."

"See?" Jack sounded smug as he tucked the certificate back into his pocket. "And you were worried. C'mon, Roy, let's get to gym." He and the other boy headed off together.

As soon as they were gone, Aisha started to cackle. The sound tickled my memory, but before I could focus too much on it, Chris interrupted, "A certificate of authenticity, really?"

The girl shrugged. "Hey, I didn't forge it. Is it my fault that he's too stupid to notice that it doesn't say anything about the autograph being real? Fifty bucks isn't the worst idiot tax I could've hit him with."

Chris shook his head slowly. "You're totally not giving the money back, are you?"

Aisha made a disparaging noise. "Pffft, hell no. I need that fifty bucks more than he does. Obviously, or he'd pay more attention to what he buys with it. And you-" She poked him in the chest. "Have got to stop trying to spoil my fun. Just cuz we're lab partners doesn't mean I won't fuck you up."

Turning then, she looked me up and down. "Cute shirt. You know Chris?"

"We've hung out a little bit." I shrugged, trying not to sound evasive. "You guys are lab partners?"

"Well for now we are." Aisha eyed the boy and sniffed. "If he keeps trying to fuck up my side business, maybe I'll find a better partner."

Chris didn't seem worried. "Oh yeah? Like who?"

Aisha's mouth opened and then shut and she cursed under her breath before waving a hand. "Whatever." She focused on me once again. "So what'd **you** think of the poster?"

"Err," I blinked at that. "Why are you asking me?"

Before the other girl could respond, there was a sudden scream from down the hall. Twisting that way quickly, my eyes widened at the sight of three full grown men in masks, carrying assault rifles.

My throat closed up at that. There were men with guns inside the school.

"This is your only warning!" The man in the lead announced. "All of you, everyone go straight to the cafeteria and nobody will be hurt." When the crowd of teenagers in the hall just stared at him in frozen shock, he hefted the rifle. "Move! Cafeteria, now!"

I looked at Chris, then down the hall toward the janitor's closet where our costumes were stored behind a false wall. It was past where the gunmen were.

Chris shook his head subtly, and the two of us were herded alongside Aisha and the other students. There was no way to get to the costumes without being seen, and it was too dangerous to start a fight right here before we had any idea of what was going on. Even if the fact that this jackasses brought guns onto school grounds did make me want to introduce all three of their rifles to their crotches repeatedly. For now though, all either of us could do was hit the emergency button on our cell phones that would alert the PRT.

Aisha, for her part, didn't seem scared. "Shit." She muttered in annoyance before mimicking the deep voice of someone older and male, 'You have to go to Arcadia, Eesh, it's the safe school.' Fuck you, bro, fuck you."

More gunmen were herding the rest of the students into the cafeteria as well, along with the staff. They were moving quickly and efficiently, and I could count at least twenty of them, all heavily armed.

Across the room, I could see Lily alongside Amy. Cassie and Theo were a little bit further back.

The crowd of scared, confused students and teachers were herded into the middle of the cafeteria, forced to bunch up together since the place wasn't meant to hold everyone in school at once. I kept watching for warning lines, but so far no one appeared to be in immediate physical danger.

Once everyone had been gathered, I found myself pressed tight against Chris and Aisha while we waited for someone to make another move. I tried to think. If need be, since we were all here and there was no way to tell who was doing it, could I rip _**everyone's **_guns out of their hands? It would need to be fast, at least ten at a time without any pause in between to give them any chance to react. And even then, could I manage it? And if I did, they might have other weapons.

I was still considering it, when another voice spoke up. "You will all be silent!"

The voices of confusion and worry stopped abruptly, and everyone turned toward the front of the cafeteria where Lung stood, flanked by Impasse, Oni Lee, and Feast.

My heart sank at that sight. This just kept getting worse. What the _**hell**_ was Lung doing here?

Once he had everyone's attention, the man stepped up onto a table so that we could all see him. "Some of my people believe that we should not be in this town, that the heroes here are too strong.

"Today, we will prove them wrong. They are frightened of the Wards, but we will show them that there is nothing to fear. We will show them that the Wards are only people, only children.

"The Wards will show themselves. They will come forward now and let all see that they are only children. They will do so within five minutes.

"If they refuse, ten children will die for every minute that they are late."

**21.02**

Needless to say, the threat made more than a few of the students start to freak out, forcing the various gunmen around the room to resort to shouted orders and threats to get things back under control. The teachers and other faculty seemed divided between calming students and trying to reason with the psychopaths that had taken over the school.

In the meantime, Lily caught my eye from across the room. Lifting one hand to scratch her cheek, she used the other to tap her wrist before subtly and briefly pointing toward me with her scratching finger.

Slowly, I lifted my hand to wipe across my face, displaying Jalopy for her. We'd had a chat about the little robot after Mika had seen him in action.

Nodding, Lily took another moment before pointedly looking up and away toward the top left corner. I followed her gaze and found the speaker for the intercom system above and to the left of the kitchen entrance where a couple of guards stood. Frowning, I looked back to Lily uncertainly. She paused as though considering how to explain what she wanted, then tapped her wrist again and made a few motions with her fingers like they were legs that were dancing.

That time I got it. Nodding, I glanced to Chris, who was tense as he looked at me. I couldn't imagine how helpless it must feel to be a tinker and not have any equipment with you in a situation like this. He also couldn't exactly talk to me, since Aisha was still right there. I mouthed, 'cover me' to him and nodded toward his lab partner.

Turning so that his body shielded my actions, Chris pitched his voice upward to be worried as he faced Aisha. "You don't really think they'd kill anybody here, do you? I mean, they're not stupid enough to bring that kind of heat down on them, right?"

While Aisha responded to that, I lifted my hands to cover my face like I was terrified, while whispering under my breath to Jalopy. "Okay, buddy. I need you to sneak out of here, get to the main office, and play some really distracting music over the loud speaker. Can you do that?" He gave a brief vibration of confirmation, and I lowered my hands, linking them behind my back while looking around. As I watched the guards restoring order, Jalopy's form shifted on my wrist before he jumped down.

I still felt nervous letting my tiny bodyguard run off without me. Even with all that he had done to help and how tough he was, I cared about the little guy too much to _**not**_ worry about sending him out alone.

Still, at the moment all I could do was wait. He disappeared from my sight almost immediately, moving through the sea of terrified teenagers, some of whom were openly calling out for the Wards to just go ahead and show themselves. Which must have been why Lung didn't seem _**too**_ concerned about quieting the students down. He wanted us to hear their fear and the condemnation in their voices.

Exposing ourselves wouldn't solve the problem. It would remove our ability to act in this situation, limit our ability to act in future situations, and put even more people in danger. There was absolutely no guarantee, or even reasonable belief, that they would spare people once they had us under control. So as tempting as it was to believe that letting them see who we were would make things better, it was only an illusion of safety, a trap that would make the larger situation much worse.

"Four minutes more!" Lung announced. "We know that you are here, Wards. You will show yourselves and we will fight you. Or you will not show yourselves, and we will kill others. You are deciding this."

For the moment, all we could do was stand and wait for Jalopy to follow through on his part. If he helped us pull this off, I was seriously considering having him instated as an official team member.

Cassie and Theo caught my attention, the former mouthing an exaggerated 'Well?' as she lifted her hands apart in a questioning gesture. Obviously she wanted to know what the hell we were doing.

I made a calming motion with a hand and then looked toward Lily. The other girl was still standing near Amy even as a small group of upset students tried to argue with the healer that, as the only cape they knew about, she should do something to fix this entire situation. The look on Lily's face made it clear that she wanted to make the crowd shut up and leave Amy alone, but she couldn't do so without drawing far too much attention to herself.

When she found me looking at her, Lily tapped her ear and nodded toward the loudspeaker. Then she nodded toward me and scratched at her cheek, using the motion to point at the ceiling before making a yanking motion with her hand as she pulled it away from her face.

That one took me a second, and I looked up at the ceiling uncomprehendingly for a moment before my eyes settled on the lights. Turning back to the other girl, I mouthed, 'Lights?' before closing my eyes pointedly. She nodded once my eyes were open again, and I understood. She wanted me to make sure the lights went out when the time came.

Theo and Chris also seemed to be communicating silently, subtly gesturing back and forth to each other. I wasn't sure what they were up to, but Theo was doing something with the watch on his wrist. Every once in a while, Chris would communicate something to Lily, whom Theo couldn't see from where he was standing. We were doing the best we could to communicate in this environment.

When we got out of this, I was so going to demand that we be given the ability to bypass the cell phone blocking. Being able to text each other would have made this so much easier.

Lung had just announced the three minute warning when the speaker system crackled, drawing everyone's attention. There was another crackle, and Lung started to say something to Oni Lee, before the speaker suddenly came alive, blaring 'Takin' Care Of Business' by Bachman-Turner Overdrive.

The second that the music started and everyone jumped, I focused on the panel near the door, attaching three tiny lines between each of the switches there and the floor beneath the panel. A mild yank later and the cafeteria was plunged into darkness.

In the ensuing confusion, Chris grabbed my wrist and pulled me backwards. I moved with him, while bodies rushed all around us. As dark as it was, the masked gunmen couldn't risk pulling their triggers without hitting one of their partners, and Lung's groupies didn't know where to direct their powers.

I realized belatedly where Chris was pulling me: the kitchen that connected to the cafeteria. The doors were open and the room in there was dark as well. The couple of gunmen that had been blocking the entrance had stepped toward the loudspeaker when the music started, which gave us just enough room to slip past them in the dark, while the noise of both the song and the people shouting covered the sound of our movements.

We reached the kitchen, passing the doorway and managing to get in and out of sight a bare handful of seconds before one of the gang members out there found the switch and the lights came back on.

We'd all made it. Lily, Cassie, and Theo were there, along with Amy. Before any of us could speak, there was a heart-stopping gunshot from the cafeteria. I hadn't seen any kind of warning line when the lights came back a second earlier, but still...

My eyes widened and I started to rise, but Theo waved me down, his eyes on his watch as he whispered, "Warning shot." When I peered closer, I could see that he had tapped into the security camera feed and was watching what was happening out there on the tiny screen of his watch.

Lung's voice bellowed from outside, saying that he was tired of games and that if we didn't show ourselves in two minutes, he was going to have _twenty_ students killed instead. Then he ordered some of his men to go and stop the music that was playing.

"Two minutes, what are we doing?" I asked, looking toward Lily.

"Costumes and equipment so we can deal with these jackasses." She announced. "But first we need a way to get more time before he starts shooting."

"I'll get you the time you need." Amy promised. "I can stall them, trust me. Just don't take too long."

Lily hesitated, but finally nodded. "Be careful. If anyone finds out I told you to take a stupid risk..."

"You didn't tell me to do anything." Amy informed her. "I'm not a delicate flower that everyone has to shield and protect. They know my face, so I'm the one that can talk to them. Do you have a way out?"

"Over here." Chris whispered from a corner where he was opened the door of a tall cabinet. Reaching inside, he pushed against the inside wall and slid it aside to reveal a hidden room beyond.

"Okay," Cassie demanded. "When were you guys planning to tell me about the secret exits? Because that seems like it should've been relevant information before something like this happened."

"Oops. Just come on." Chris beckoned with a hand. "There's a few spots like this around school. They all lead down to where the extra equipment is."

The others moved for the cabinet, while I hesitated, looking at Amy. "Any idea where Pandora is?"

"Waiting for me across the street, the last I knew." Amy admitted. "I don't know if she knows anything's wrong yet. She wanted to be in the school, but I pointed out that they keep careful tabs on attendance here and some random person just showing up and sitting in on classes wouldn't work."

I made her promise to be careful once more before moving to join the others. The hole in the back of the cabinet led to a fairly cramped tunnel that made me feel bad for how tiny it had to feel to someone like Theo, who was crammed in just ahead of me.

Nonetheless, we squeezed our way through, and I noticed that the space we were in had to be between the exterior wall and the inner hallway. I wondered briefly how they managed to do that without making even that much difference in size obvious, before realizing how unlikely it was that any high school student would pay that much attention.

A few steps in, I heard Amy's voice coming from Theo's watch, broadcast by the security system. I leaned in closer, and he held it up for me to see while we continued to edge our way through the cramped tunnel, only able to move so quickly.

"Lung!" Amy had her hand on the neck of one of the masked guards. "You're not killing anyone."

The tiny image of Feast on the screen looked like he wanted to eat Amy then and there, but Lung stopped him with a hand before inclining his head. "Daughter of Marquis. I would leave you unharmed. Do not make me change this decision."

"Anyone fires so much as a bullet," Amy informed him. "And I'll change Buddy here so that his lungs convert air into poison gas before he exhales it. You'll all be dead inside of thirty seconds."

Another few steps brought us to the hidden room that I'd already known about, the one containing our costumes. I slipped out behind Theo, then moved to the locker where my equipment was and started to change. By that point, none of us paid attention to the privacy curtain that was supposed to separate the males changing from the females. There wasn't time, and frankly we were all too busy listening to the sounds coming from Theo's watch to worry about modesty.

There was a tinny noise that I recognized a moment later as Lung chuckling. "You are not capable. You are healer, not killer, not warrior."

Amy's voice was hard. "Lately I've found myself being open to new and exciting experiences. Yesterday I tried moussaka for the first time. Last week I went skydiving. That was an adventure. This week, hmm, maybe I'll try making a bunch of wannabe child-killers puke their lungs up into their hands and see how I like it."

"You would kill others." Lung pointed out. "Many more than only us in this room."

"So maybe I'll fix it so the gas is benign unless it's filtered through those stupid black ski masks your thugs all seem to like so much."

Lung snorted with disbelief then. "You make believe that you are capable of so much control."

By that time, we had finished changing. I pulled the mask on last before looking toward Flechette. "Now what? Amy can't stall for much longer."

Lily answered by activating her comm. "Control? There's a hostage situation at the school."

"We know." The voice that came back was terse and harried. "Sorry, Wards, you're on your own for the moment."

"What do you mean we're on our own?" Lily demanded. "Lung's here with all his men. There's teenagers here, innocent kids."

"Sorry." The agent on control duty repeated. "But Bakuda showed up and she's got bombs all over the place out there. She says she'll set them off if anyone interferes. They evacuated everywhere within a four block radius. No one's allowed in, not even Protectorate. They're trying to track down Bakuda now and put a stop to it, but for the time being, you're all we've got in there."

Obviously flinching, Lily disconnected and then looked back to the rest of us. "Come on, I have an idea."

Amy was still stalling as we quietly exited the closet area and emerged into the hallway. At the end of the corridor, I saw another of the masked men standing at the base of a flight of stairs, watching the street outside through the window there. Before he could notice us and raise an alarm, I pulled his gun out of his hand, then attached a line from the man's crotch to the railing of the stairs that he was near and proceeded to yank on that line, forcing him into the worst hip thrust of his life.

A moment later, Lily led us to the main office. The two thugs that Lung had sent to check on the music were lying unmoving on the ground, while Jalopy perched on the back of one of them, poking the back of his head as if prodding him to stop being a wuss and keep fighting. When he saw us, the little robot quickly scrambled toward me and hopped up to take his spot on my wrist once more.

"Okay that thing?" Chris was nodding toward it. "That's freaking awesome."

"I'm telling you, honorary Ward." I smiled and gave my little bot a pat before looking to Lily. "Amy's running out of things to say."

"I know." She turned away from us, picking up the microphone for the intercom system. She flicked the line to the cafeteria on and then cleared her throat before speaking. "Coward."

Theo pressed a button on his mace, and one of his drones displayed a holographic image of the security camera feed. Lung was focused on the speaker. "You will fight, or they will-"

"We're not in there, idiot." Flechette interrupted. "You want to fight us, then come get us. Or you can stay in there with your hostages so that everyone knows that the great, powerful Lung is a lie, and that you're really a wimp who hides behind hostages and innocents so that the teenagers don't hurt you. You're not a warrior, Lung. You're a child-killing coward."

Lung was beyond rational thought at that point, bellowing about how he was going to rip us apart as he moved for the exit, accompanied by some (but not all) of his men.

"Well we got their attention, boss." Reach acknowledged. "Now what?"

Flechette checked her sword before nodding to the door. "Move. Spread out, keep them occupied, pick off everyone we can. Until the Protectorate clears Bakuda's bombs, we're on our own.

"Let's make Lung's people realize that they're the ones that are trapped in here with us."

**21.03**

Reach and I stayed together as we ran up the stairs to the second floor, where the science wing was. The rest of the team had spread out elsewhere, but thanks to our comms, we could actually stay in contact this time. No more elaborate pantomime needed.

The basic plan was that we would pick off Lung's lieutenants and his soldiers one by one, while not actually engaging with the man himself. Hit and run tactics, avoiding a direct fight with Lung himself until we dealt with all of the minions. We were trying not to have an actual fight with him until or unless we had to, so he'd have less opportunity to get amped up. Which also meant that we didn't want to have a long, drawn out or obvious fight with his men either, and risk drawing him to where it was happening. So we needed to choose our battles, hit his men when we could take out a couple and then get away before Lung had a chance to show up. And most of all, we needed to draw as much of their attention as possible away from the cafeteria and the civilians.

Once we reached the top of the stairs, I caught Reach by the arm and attached lines to haul the two of us up to the ceiling, similar to what I had done when we were running from the guys in the Birdcage. Some of them were same guys that we were avoiding now, actually.

We both flattened our backs against the ceiling just above the stairway and listened to the stampeding boots as a rush of men approached from below. There was a pause at the foot of the stairs, and I heard a gruff voice order some of the men to go upstairs while the rest would come with him to clear the lower halls. In the distance, Lung bellowed something about what he was going to do to us, but I ignored it to focus on the immediately relevant threat.

Three men with guns and a parahuman that I didn't recognize came tromping up the stairs, passing beneath us. The cape was some new thug that had obviously joined up with Lung recently. His armor was some kind of snake motif, with green chain-mail that emulated shiny scales over a black body suit, while the helmet looked like a cobra's head rearing to strike with the flared hood.

We waited until they were right under us before dropping. Reach and I each collided with one of the armed men, knocking both to the ground. I brought my gauntlet back and then punched down at the back of my guy's head to put him down, before lifting my gaze in time to see the third gunman spinning around with his gun raised. Quickly, I attached a line between the barrel and the leg of the parahuman just before the trigger was pulled. The snake-man stumbled from the gunshot, but it didn't look like the bullet was able to penetrate through the armor. Which meant my knock out darts wouldn't either. Great.

In the meantime, Reach sent the downed body of her thug flying into the face of the third man to knock him backwards. I used that opening to roll forward and then spun to kick the stumbling man's leg out from under him so that he fell heavily with his unconscious companion lying on top of him. His head turned toward me as he tried to heave the other thug off himself, and I used a line-enhanced kick from my boots to put him down for good.

By that point, the snake-themed cape had recovered from his stumble. His gaze was locked on me as he made a sound as if hocking up a loogie. I froze for just a second, thinking, _ewwww_, before coming back to my senses in time to dive out of the way just before the mouth part of the man's helmet slid aside long enough for him to spit a softball sized wad of greenish... stuff that melted right through the nearest wall with a sizzle.

Acid spit, fantastic. At least we knew what he was capable of now. I came up on my knees and wagged my finger at him. "Hey! Don't you know there's no spitballs allowed in school? You keep pushing your luck, young man, and you're going straight to the principal's office."

Before he could respond to that, I looked toward Reach. "Ready?" At her short nod, I attached lines to her feet and gave her a firm shove up and forward just as she pushed off. The momentum threw the other girl into a long dive that sent her sailing and and over the man's shoulder while he recoiled in surprise before she landed behind him.

The man looked back and forth between the two of us on either side of him. Then he chose me and sent another spray of acid in my direction. It was all I could do to drop and roll beneath it while the acid spit went through another wall. "You got it, Reach?"

She gave me a thumbs up. "Yup." The man pivoted to look at her, just as she made a dismissive waving motion with her hand. Instantly, the snake-boy was thrown sideways into the nearby wall, then thrown back the opposite way to the other wall, then bounced off the ceiling before hitting the floor with a weak groan. As planned, Reach had managed to tag the guy's costume when I threw her past him.

Before the man could recover from being thrown around so violently, I reached his prone, groaning form and knelt down while slipping one of my knock-out darts from where the extras were stored. Grabbing his helmet, I shoved it up enough to expose the man's neck and then jammed the dart there. He stopped moving within a couple seconds, slumping down.

The fight had taken too long, and there were already footsteps rushing our way from downstairs. I straightened from the man and started to jog along with Reach, the two of us sprinting down the hallway before ducking into one of the classrooms.

We had entered the back of a long science lab. The room was lined with heavy metal tables covered in microscopes and more equipment, as well as all the backpacks and books that had been left behind when the gunmen had stormed through while forcing everyone to the cafeteria.

Separating as soon as we went through the door, the two of us flattened ourselves onto either side of it. I stripped one of the darts and underhand tossed it to Reach, before grabbing one of my own. A few seconds later, two more gunmen came through. The second their guns came into view, I attached lines from both barrels to the opposite wall and yanked them out of their grasps. Both were met with a dart to the neck from either of us, collapsing to the floor before they could shout a warning.

Panting a little, I looked toward Cassie. "You good?"

She nodded, stretching out and cracking her neck from one side to the other. "Tell you one thing, this new costume's a lot easier to move in than the robe was."

"Should it really be considered new still?" I asked, while poking my head out the doorway to make sure the hall was clear. There were voices, but they were still further back. "You've been wearing it for over a month now."

"I wore the other one for years," she pointed out before giving me a little push. "Come on, let's go. Bad guys ain't gonna beat the shit out of _themselves._" My mouth opened, but she interrupted with an idle wave of her hand. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can make sure they do."

"Reach, Tether, how are you guys doing up there?" Flechette sounded like she was out of breath. She had gone off by herself, leaving our two tinkers to work together.

"Six down," I replied. "Five thugs and one snake-boy with acid spit."

"Cobra." Flechette confirmed. "Good. Think you guys can work your way back around to the lower halls and get to the cafeteria? I'm not sure how long Panacea can keep everyone safe in there. Sooner we secure the hostages, sooner we can get this over with."

Looking to Reach, I waited for her to nod before confirming, "You got it. On our way."

Unfortunately, we had barely stepped into the hall once more before a line attached itself to Cassie. I quickly dove into her, knocking both of us sprawling just as a crack of gunfire filled the air. Several bullets punched more holes through the wall where we had been, and I rolled quickly to the side and through the doorway on the opposite side of the hall before the gunman could adjust his aim.

Two more gunshots came before I heard a sharp cry from down the hall. When I poked my head out again, I saw Reach with her hand outstretched, summoning one of her metal balls back to her. A quick glance toward where the bullets had been coming from revealed a man lying in a pool of blood from where the ball had gone straight through him. He wasn't dead, but he was definitely in bad shape.

Grimacing, I took a step that way, but Cassie caught my arm. "More guys that way, Tether. Come on, the back stairs." When I still hesitated, glancing back toward the bleeding man, she shook her head. "Look, he's not some innocent guy. The son of a bitch was here to kill kids. He was shooting at us. Besides, you go down there and you're wasting time that we could use to help the people downstairs. Remember them? The civilians, _**they're **_the ones that didn't do anything to deserve this. They're the ones that need help, not that piece of shit. So let's help them."

I took a breath before letting it out as I turned to run with her. "The civilians didn't do anything to deserve this? You've... grown up a lot since you joined the team."

Her blush wasn't visible, but I knew it was there as she muttered, "Oh shut up."

The good news was that we reached the back stairwell. The bad news was that it was already occupied. I'd barely had a chance to come around the corner of the doorway and onto the landing, having gotten there just ahead of Reach, before a figure crashed into me. Even in spite of my padded costume, the air was still knocked out of me as I was sent sprawling back out into the hall with a cry.

Training with Grace had helped, and I managed to roll with the fall even after the unexpected blow that had stolen most of my air. I came back up onto my hands and knees before lifting my head to see Reach as she was casually flung through the doorway and down the stairs.

It was another of Lung's capes that I didn't recognize. His skin was a dark bronze color, almost metallic. My best guess from the way that he had hit me was that he was a brute of some kind.

Obviously, the metal skin might mean I could likely attach lines to him. Unfortunately, he didn't give me the chance. He might have been metal, but he was also fast. Before I could react, he came in fast enough to grab my arm and nearly yanked it out of socket as he hauled me up. I found myself spun through the air as the man tried to slam me sideways into the wall with enough force that, had I hit face-first the way that he wanted me to, probably would have snapped my neck.

Months ago, I would have frozen in terror at that point. Now, the memory of Ethan swinging me around in jest came back to me and I remembered what I had done then. Grunting, I twisted my body enough that my feet hit the wall first, the impact gel inside reducing the force so much that I barely felt it. Then I attached a line between my boots and the wall, using them to push off the wall and out of the man's grasp as I went over his shoulder. As soon as I hit the ground, I threw myself up once more, using one line on my foot to propel myself higher before using another line between my glove and the ceiling to hold myself up there for a couple seconds longer than what should have been possible.

The man spun around below me, reaching for where I should have been. Instead, I gave myself a heave and dropped behind him. As I fell, I flipped around, attaching lines between both feet and his back before using them to nail him with all the force I could muster. I was yanked from a fall into a sort of sideways flying kick that would have looked right at home with any wire-fu martial arts film.

Even with his enhanced strength, the line-enhanced blow still knocked the man into a forward stumble, and gave me time to get back to my feet before he could recover.

The man started to turn back to me, but I quickly attached a pair of lines between his shoulders and the floor beneath him, giving a heave that yanked even his powerful form down. He struggled, but I used another pair of lines to yank his arms to the floor, and yet another pair to hold his legs down.

"What the fuck!?" The bronze man yanked at the invisible lines that held him, but couldn't budge. "Let me out of this, you stupid, worthless little cunt! I was just gonna break your face, but now you pissed me off, so I'll really fucking hurt you!"

"Well **somebody's** got a real potty mouth." I chastised while dropping down to perch on top of the struggling man's chest. He struggled uselessly, my lines continuing to hold him in place. "See, usually, I can't do this to brutes, cuz you'll just tear your way out of the clothes that I pin to the floor."

"I'll tear **you**! If you don't lemme up, I'm gonna make you wish you never put on that god damn costume!" The man continued on with some other threats that I mostly ignored, though I was still really glad that he was relatively helpless at the moment. He was _not_ a nice man, to say the least.

Honestly, it was hard to hold that many lines for so long, but I didn't let him know that. Instead, I tapped his chest and spoke over his threats. "But _**you**_ came with your own handy-dandy metal skin, which means I can hold you down as long as I want to. So thanks for that, it was super-considerate."

He started to say something else, but I quickly covered his mouth and nose with both of my hands. "No no, don't speak. You'll ruin this moment that I'm sure we'll both treasure forever."

The man's eyes widened when my hands didn't move, and he started to struggle even more furiously. But I kept focusing on my lines, holding them in place while keeping my hands over his mouth and nose to cut off his air supply. After longer than I thought it would take, the man finally stopped struggling and slumped. Just to be sure, I held on for another few seconds before releasing him.

When I looked up, Cassie was there in the doorway. There was blood on her costume, and I started a little. "Reach?"

"Not mine." She assured me before turning back to the stairs. "There were a couple more piss-sticks down there I had to deal with. That's what took me so long to get back. Ready?"

I looked back to the downed man, pausing briefly before nodding. "Yeah, let's go."

This time, we made it down the stairs without being interrupted, passing a couple of unmoving forms in the corner of the bottom stairwell on the way out.

We emerged into the corridor at the back end of the school, about as far from the cafeteria as possible. "Hurry," I urged quietly, starting to jog while trying not to attract attention. "We need to get to Panacea."

A new voice interrupted before we had gone more than a few steps. "Aww, running away to the healer?" The albino, Feast, emerged from a nearby classroom where he had obviously been lurking, putting himself in our path. "The healer can't help you if there isn't anything left to touch." He showed his full mouth of sharp canine teeth. "How will you taste, hmm?"

Reach sent two metal balls zinging his way, which I followed up with a dart from my gauntlet. Before they could hit the cannibal, his hand came up. I caught a brief glance of some kind of vial before he poured the contents down his throat. The instant that he did, his skin turned wispy and indistinct, darkening slightly into a pale yellowish cloud while his clothes fell away. The dart and the two balls went right through his form.

Somehow, he could still talk. I wasn't sure how that worked. "Drugged gas. You'll inhale it, be paralyzed, and then we can have some real fun."

Cursing under my breath, I took a step back. "Hey, everyone has a gas problem sometimes. But they've got plenty of medicine to deal with that sort of thing. You have nothing to be embarrassed about." I was yammering, stalling for a chance to think of a way to stop the man. I could use lines to get past him, but all that would do was drag the paralytic cloud all the way back with us to where all the civilians were. Not exactly a win.

For his part, the man just chuckled before starting to sweep forward toward us. Then, in mid-motion, the cloud suddenly stopped short while he made a muffled noise of confusion.

"Err..." I looked at Reach briefly, but she just shrugged back at me.

Then I heard that familiar cackle, and finally remembered where I'd heard it before. Sure enough, Aisha, or rather, Freezetag popped her head out from behind the frozen cloud, withdrawing her hand and shaking it off.

"What do you know?" She sounded more than a little impressed with herself, still snickering a little. "It _**does**_ freeze intangible people." Looking up at the two of us then, she raised both hands in an impatient gesture. "Well? Are you going to stand there like a couple dumbasses all day, or are you gonna go do your hero thing?"

**21.04**

For a second, I just stared at the girl. She stood unmasked, not even really seeming to **care** that she had revealed her identity by doing what she did. If anything, she seemed to be some odd mixture of amused by our surprise, and yet also annoyed that we hadn't moved on already.

It was the thought of the other students and the faculty that snapped me out of my shock, and I grabbed hold of Reach before managing to give Aisha a weak, "Hide in a classroom and stay out of sight." Then I used a line to yank Cassie and myself all the way to the end of the hall, making up for time that had been lost while we dealt with both the bronze-skinned man and Feast.

There wasn't enough time to even _begin_ reacting to the revelation that Chris's lab partner was not only a cape, but one of the Undersiders. Did she know my identity, the way that Tattletale had? Was that why she found the whole autographed poster thing so amusing, and why she'd wanted my opinion?

Whatever the case, there were far more important things to worry about. Namely, all the hostages in the cafeteria. Not to mention the remaining murderous thugs that were still running around. Like Lung. Yeah, him in particular. I hadn't forgotten how pissed off at me he had to be.

Tempting as it was to just release Jalopy and see how Lung liked round two, I didn't think it was a good idea. Jalopy was a little badass, for sure. But a lot of his strength came from the fact that no one _**expected**_ the little guy to be a threat. He took people by surprise. That wouldn't happen with Lung again, and if anything happened to my robot buddy, I'd never forgive myself. Plus if I let him become too well known, his spot on my wrist would make him a target for any enemy that picked a fight. No, Jalopy needed to be an emergency measure, when the enemy wasn't expecting a threat. His job worked best when he stayed as much of a secret as possible.

It took two more line-enhanced lunges to haul myself and Reach through the school. I could hear the sound of fighting going on elsewhere, and winced at the thought that one of the others might be in trouble. But as much as I wanted to help my team, we needed to make sure the hostages were safe first.

When we finally reached the cafeteria entrance, there were two armed guards standing out in front of the closed doors. Both looked up at our arrival, lifting their rifles. Unfortunately for them, we weren't in the mood to play around. I yanked both guns out of the men's hands and into Reach's waiting ones. Then a dart from each of us found the two men's arms, and they went down for the count.

"You good?" I asked Reach while putting a hand out toward the door.

"One sec." Kneeling, Cassie set a gun down long enough to tap one of the unconscious men's pants and shirt. Then she picked up the gun and straightened while the body was lifted off the ground to float in front of her like a shield. Finally, my teammate looked at the assault rifles that she held in either hand and then nodded. "Now I'm good, let's do this."

Attaching a line between my gauntlet and the door, I gave a yank to rip the door off its hinges and tossed it away before stepping back to let my companion go in first.

Reach went through the doorway, lifting both rifles to point in either direction. She was obviously using her power more than her own strength to do so, holding them up with her telekinesis.

Her entrance was met with silence for a few moments before she called back, her voice tinted with confusion, "Clear, I guess?"

Frowning, I walked through the doorway and stared at the sight of a cafeteria full of unmoving bodies lying around everywhere. Student, teacher, and gunman alike, they were all down. For a second, I just looked around the room in confusion and disbelief before spotting Amy lying around the middle of the room. Instantly, I ran that way and dropped down to check her.

"She's breathing. They're all breathing." I realized with relief a second later. "They're all just sleeping."

Standing next to me, Reach realized, "Must've been her. Bet she used her power like she said she would, only she made it a knock-out gas and just put everyone to sleep." She shrugged then. "Made the room easier to secure anyway."

Even as she said that, I caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of my eye. Twisting around, I was just in time to spot two of the masked men coming through the entrance with their weapons drawn. Before they could fire, I attached lines between their masks and the back of the guns, giving a yank so that they smacked themselves in the faces hard enough to make them stumble back before the guns were thrown far away from them.

While the pair were recovering, Reach brought her own two guns up and unloaded several shots into each of them. The rifles bucked a little, but not nearly as much as they should have. She was using her power to not only hold the weapons up and on target, but also to reduce the recoil so much that they might as well have been mounted, rather than each held in one slender fifteen year old girl's hand.

Once the men were down, I looked toward my gun-toting teammate. "I'll see if I can wake up Amy and let Flechette know what's going on. Think you can cover the entrance?"

In answer, Reach let go of the rifles so that they floated in the air, maneuvering them to hover over either shoulder. Then she reached down and picked up the two discarded guns that I had yanked away from the newcomers before rising. "On it." She announced before jogging over to the doorway with her small arsenal of four assault rifles all either held or floating along with her.

Activating my comm, I tried shaking Amy's shoulder. "Flechette, we've got the cafeteria. Everyone's unconscious. We think Panacea knocked them all out with that power she was talking about. Room's clear for now, but what are we gonna do with all of them?"

It took a moment for the other girl to get back to me, and she sounded distracted. "They'd just get in the way if they were conscious. Bakuda's bombs are still active out there, so we couldn't let them go anyway. Just keep the—hold-" She went off the comm for about ten tense seconds before coming back. "Hold the room if you can. We'll meet you there. Aid's got—hold-" She was gone again, this time for almost thirty seconds before her voice returned. "Aid's got one of his drones leading Lung on a wild goose chase, mimicking our voices to lure him away. Calling everyone in to meet you. We'll put ourselves between the civilians and anyone else that's left."

By the time that I'd finished with the comm, Amy still hadn't woken up. I didn't want to try too hard, because I had no idea what sort of gas she'd used to knock everybody out.

Giving up on waking her, I rose and jogged over to where Cassie was. Her guns barked loudly just before I arrived, and she glanced over her shoulder at me. "One guy out by the senior lockers. He decided to go the other way."

"Aid's keeping Lung busy with a drone." I let her know. "Everyone's heading here to play Alamo against whoever's left."

Her head turned to look at me, and I sensed her squint. "You know the people in the Alamo lost, right?"

I gave her a thumbs up. "Sure, but we've got something they didn't have."

"Super powers?" She guessed. "A badass robot spider? Radios? An unconscious healer?"

My head shook at all of that. "Nope, we've got snazzy, colorful costumes." I waved a hand down between us demonstratively. "Did **they** have snazzy, colorful costumes? I didn't think so."

Before Reach could even start to respond to that, movement in the hall caught our attention. Fortunately, it was Kid Win, who recoiled at the sight of the four different rifles pointed his way. "Whoa, hey! I come in peace." He joined us and bent over to catch his breath, panting hard. "Whatever you do, don't let anyone go outside. I ummm..." He trailed off briefly before straightening. "One of the those new capes, some guy with electric hands or something, he went for the exit. He ummm, he only got about six steps before something went off and he was... errr... frozen in ice. Then he shattered."

I winced at that. "Bakuda plays for keeps. We've gotta keep everyone in until the PRT clears the place."

"Where's Aid?" Reach demanded then. "You guys were together, weren't you?"

"We got separated." Kid admitted. "He had to reprogram his drone to keep Lung busy while I kept electro-boy and his groupies off him."

Poor Cassie looked like the news that Theo had been left alone made her want to point those guns back at Chris again. Fortunately, she restrained herself, activating her comm instead. "Aid, are you good?"

"I'm okay." The answer came not through the comm, but from just down the hall as Theo himself came around the corner and into view. He looked disheveled and some of his armor was singed or even broken in places. He was also dragging something along behind him.

"Th-Aid!" Cassie lowered the guns as soon as she saw who it was.

"What are you...?" I started to ask what he had with him, before blinking as the other boy reached us and dropped the load he had been dragging. For a second, all of us stared at the familiar mask of the man that was bound and obviously unconscious.

"Is that Oni Lee?" Kid Win asked in disbelief. "You took down Oni Lee by yourself?"

Theo just shrugged self-consciously and slumped against the nearby wall to rest for a second. "Just got lucky." He mumbled under his breath.

Looking from the downed and secured teleporting assassin to Theo and back again, I shook my head. "At some point, it stops being luck and starts being skill." Pointing to a discarded sweatshirt hanging off a nearby locker, I added, "Kid, hand me that jacket?" When he passed it to me, I used it to wrap around the still unconscious and bound Oni Lee's mask and tied it in place, blocking his vision in case he woke up. That way he couldn't see to teleport anywhere.

"Speaking of Aid's skill, can any of your drones rouse people that have been drugged?" I explained what Amy had apparently done. "We should probably try to wake at least her up, if we can."

Aid looked hesitant, but nodded and pushed off the wall. "I umm... think I've got something for that." He moved into the room, and I left Kid Win and Reach to cover the exit while I went in to help.

A few steps into the room, something nagged at me and I started to look around a little more. After a couple more steps, I stopped short and put a hand out to block Theo. "Wait." I told him. "Something's different." Slowly, I looked around, trying to place what looked wrong. "I don't think-"

That was as far as I got before a figure that was lying on the floor near Amy suddenly moved. Belatedly, I realized what had been bothering me about the room. Before, there had been only one body lying within arm's reach of Panacea. When we came back into the room, there were two.

Unfortunately, I got it too late. The new figure rolled over, grabbed hold of the unconscious Amy, and rose with his arm around her neck.

"Impasse." I glared at the man while Aid and I stood there, caught flat-footed. "Let her go."

The thin, unimposing looking man just smirked at me while keeping his arm locked tight around Amy's throat to hold her up. His voice sounded rather squeaky, like he'd never quite made it all the way through puberty. "You know, I don't think I will." He stood with Amy held up between us, obviously struggling a bit with her weight. "Don't try any of that throwing me around bullshit either." He lifted his other arm to show a knife briefly before putting it back down against the unconscious girl where I couldn't see to yank it away.

Kid Win had joined us by then, but there was nothing he could do in that moment either. I glanced toward the other boy before turning back to the Bird Cage escapee. "Impasse, put her down." I coached him, looking for something that I could do. "You know how important that girl is? Do you have the slightest idea how much shit you're in already just for threatening her?"

"Shit?" He laughed disbelievingly, an ugly, snorting-hiccup sort of noise. "You think so? What are they gonna do, put a _second_kill order out on me? Throw me **back **in the Birdcage? Oooh, I'm so scared."

Shaking my head, I spoke slowly. "It's not the Protectorate you should be worried about, Impasse. It's Marquis. Do you have any idea what he's gonna do to you if you hurt her?"

That made the man frown slightly, but he shook off that nudging common sense. "You know what? You're gonna shut up now. I'm the one talking, and I say that we're gonna play a game called, 'everyone do whatever the fuck Impasse tells them to' If you win, this bitch gets to stay alive."

Inwardly, I cursed. The guy was too stupid to think about the consequences of his actions. There was no point in threatening him with future retaliation when he refused to even consider them. His shield had protected him from consequences for too long for him to actually think that he could be hurt. Even now, it was protecting him from anything Aid or Kid Win could do, and I couldn't attach lines to him or Amy without giving him time to use that knife before they could do any good.

I briefly considered putting lines past him to yank a chair or something into his back, but all that would do was guarantee that Amy would get that blade in _**her**_ back. We needed a way to separate them, or at least get that knife back into view so I could pull it away.

"Good." Impasse nodded once it was obvious that we had no immediate moves, still struggling to hold Amy upright. "Now you see who's in charge. We-"

He was interrupted by the sound of Amy groaning a little. "Wha—where..." She stiffened then, apparently feeling the knife against her back.

"Good, you're awake." The man straightened a little, since he didn't have to hold her up anymore. "Now stand up straight. And keep your hands down where you can't touch any skin, or we'll see how good a healer you are with half your guts lying out on the floor. Just don't move."

"Don't worry, Amy." I assured the other girl. "He knows he's trapped. He's not going anywhere."

The man glowered at me, but before he could say anything, there was a noise at the door. We all turned slightly to see Flechette coming in. She paused slightly to take in the sight of what was happening, and Impasse smirked at her, his annoyance at me briefly forgotten. "Hey, hey, hey. Glad you could join us. We were just negotiating terms to keep this little healer alive."

"Negotiating terms?" Lily echoed, starting to walk forward once more as she headed that way.

Impasse nodded shortly. "That's right, terms. You want the bitch alive, you'll negotiate. So first-"

I barely saw Lily's hand move. One second she was walking normally, and the next second, her arm was outstretched. I heard the slightest whistle of something small and fast cutting through the air for a brief instant before the handle of the tiny knife that she'd drawn from her sleeve seemed to just appear in the middle of the man's forehead. It had gone straight through Impasse's forcefield as if it wasn't even there.

Flechette hadn't broken stride. While Impasse dropped like a puppet whose strings had been cut, she took three more quick steps and reached out to catch the stumbling Amy with one arm, pulling the other girl out of the way while also supporting her so that she wouldn't fall.

Then Lily looked down at the man, who had been dead the instant her knife struck him, and prompted, "Okay, now let's hear your counter-offer."

**21.05**

"Holy... shit..." Chris was the first one to find his voice after that, while the rest of us stood and stared. "You just... he's... he's..."

"He's dead." Flechette acknowledged quietly, lowering her head a little to stare at the body on the ground. Her voice was softer now that the adrenaline rush of what she'd had to do eased slightly. The quip itself had obviously been made more in anger at the kind of man that Impasse had been and the situation that he'd forced her into than out of any kind of flippancy about what she had just done.

I had a good idea of how that felt. It wasn't exactly the same, but my own words about giving Teacher 'the finger' just before letting Pandora kill him came to mind. It was easy to say things in the heat of the moment that made it seem like the things you had to do didn't affect you, when you were hyped up and reacting. But that didn't mean you didn't think about the action itself later. It didn't mean that I hadn't gone over and over that bit in my head, wondering if there was anything else I could have done that wouldn't have resulted in the man's death at what was, if not by my hand, at the very least at my request. And like me, Lily would have the same thoughts once the situation was resolved.

It was even somewhat different from the fact that Reach had shot the two men. They had obviously been wearing body armor, and in any case she hadn't aimed for vital places. They weren't necessarily _dead_. They could still get medical attention if we resolved this quickly enough.

Impasse, like almost any other Birdcage resident, had been a sick and horrible individual. He hadn't been one of the 'normal' Cape villains, who even if they were violent, at least kept to some level of decency. There was villain, and then there was monster. Impasse had been the kind of person who found entertainment in the painful suffering and death of others. One of his favorite activities had been to use his field to block the exits from a building that was on fire and watch the people inside burn.

All of the Birdcage escapees had been given ongoing, constant kill orders. These were _**bad**_ people. The Protectorate wouldn't blink twice at what Flechette had done. The kill order was active, Impasse had been currently engaged in activity that threatened civilian teenagers in a public setting, including a direct and immediate threat to Panacea. Not to mention the kind of gang-war from Marquis that we would have been dealing with if she'd actually been hurt or even killed. Flechette had killed the man because it was the swiftest, easiest way to defuse the situation.

Again, it was similar to me directing Pandora into killing Teacher. Perhaps a better solution could have been found, one that didn't end in anyone's death. But allowing him to die, directing his death, had been the best option I could _see_ then. And in this case, putting Impasse down like the rabid dog that he was, happened to have been the best solution that Lily had seen. Even if it did feel different emotionally because of the idea that he had been 'negotiating' rather than attacking. I knew the killing was absolutely justified because of the immediate threat to Amy and the kill order.

Logically, I knew all of that. We all knew all of that. But I still had a moment, however brief, where I looked at the girl and wondered how easy it had been for her to make that call. She hadn't hesitated, hadn't tried to talk the man down. She had just acted, and now he was dead. And somehow, killing a man in cold blood, purposefully and without hesitation while he was attempting to negotiate his release (even if he was a monster) seemed _**different.**_

It was probably similar to the thoughts that people had about me when they found out that I didn't try harder to stop Pandora from killing the bad guys that she killed.

"Y-you killed him?" Amy's hesitant voice interrupted my thoughts as she stood where Lily had pulled her. "He's really..."

She trailed off, and I took a step that way, finally snapping out of my shock. "Are you okay?"

Amy looked at me, obviously still shaken from what had just happened. That couldn't be a fun way to be woken up and then have to react to. "I'm okay. I mean, I'll... be okay."

I rested a hand on her back before looking toward Lily. Lowering my voice slightly, I asked, "What about you?" There was no answer, and I hesitated before raising a hand to touch the other girl gently.

She jumped when my hand reached her, looking up from the body and physically shaking herself. "I'm... I'm good. Sorry, I just... It just hit me. He's not getting up again. I know I... I did it on purpose, but now, after... I just..." She took in a long breath and let it out. "I have to focus. We're not done yet."

Amy spoke up next to me. "It..." She gazed around the room briefly, obviously trying not to look at the body of the man who had taken her hostage. "It worked. Who's left? Where's Reach?"

"Guarding the hallway." Theo answered for us. He and Chris had finally snapped out of their own shock and approached. Everyone was doing their level best not to look at the body on the floor. Well, almost everyone. Lily couldn't seem to _stop_looking at it. He focused on Amy instead. "I want to wake these people up. Err, not the bad guys, but the umm, the rest of them. Can you... uhh, tell me what you used to knock them out?" Even now, even after everything he had done, Theo still sounded nervous while he was trying to talk to Panacea. It still seemed like he didn't think he deserved to be there.

What the hell kind of number had Kaiser _**done**_ on this boy's confidence and self-worth?

Amy cast one more glance toward Lily and hesitated before holding her hand up toward Theo. "One second." Then she stepped over and poked the other girl, who had seemed to go back into a trance while staring down at the body. "Hey, umm, I know you probably saved my life. And you probably saved a lot of other people too. Everyone... everyone in the future who doesn't die because of what that guy would have done to them has you to thank for it. But they'll never get to thank you because you made it so they'd never experience what they would have if you let him live. So I'll say it for me and for them. Thank you. Thank you for saving me, and for... you know... stopping him." Giving a short, uncertain nod, Amy pivoted then and moved to help Aid start waking people up.

"Kid," Flechette found her own voice after staring at Amy for a moment. Her voice was still a little weak. "Can you check on Reach, make sure she's-"

She was interrupted by the sound of gunfire erupting out in the hallway. Reach was already backpedaling into the room. "Shit, fuck, damn piece of dick-nibbling dumpster-"

"Reach!" I shouted over the sound of her oh-so-professional cursing. "Are you okay?"

"Lung!" She shouted back at me. "He's uhhh, on his way, and he is not happy. Might take him a minute because of Aid's drones harassing him, but he is coming."

Flinching, I looked around a bit helplessly at all the still unconscious people. It was going to take time for Aid and Amy to wake them up. And even once they did, then what? With Bakuda's bombs outside, there wasn't a safe place for the civilians to evacuate to.

"It'll be a massacre." Kid Win gave voice to my thoughts. "Fire, Lung stomping around and getting bigger? Even if we stood a chance against him, which we don't, all these people..." He trailed off, not needing to say the words. We knew what would happen. The civilians would be collateral damage.

No. I refused. Looking at the students and teachers whose unconscious, helpless bodies surrounded us, I thought about Taylor. I thought about what I had allowed to happen, what I had _helped_ happen, the life I had helped ruin. The girl who should have been here, who should have been allowed to live.

I thought of Taylor, and I vowed to myself that if it took my last breath, if I had to stand in front of Lung and allow him to kill me to ease his own anger so that the people in _**this**_ room could live, then I would do just that. _**Whatever**_ it took, I would save these people.

And in the next moment, I knew what to do.

"Guys," I looked toward Reach, Kid Win, and Flechette. "I've got a plan."

* * *

><p>By the time that I emerged from the cafeteria, Lung was already too tall to walk normally down the hallway. He had to stoop a bit, his metallic scales gleaming as he used a single clawed hand to bat away the last of Aid's drones that had been stopping him. I had the feeling that his experience with Jalopy had been what made the man take the time to destroy all of them rather than just rushing forward. He didn't want a repeat of the time a robot had kicked his ass.<p>

"Yo!" I shouted to get his attention, and the armored beast of a man turned slowly toward me, fire spiraling around him, impatient to be released so that it could burn and consume. His eyes, still hidden behind the mask, burned an orange-red color similar to molten steel.

When I had first heard of Lung, I'd thought his name was weird. I'd actually asked my dad 'long what?', and he had explained that it was the name of a Chinese dragon. Later I'd learned that it was actually the Chinese word **for** dragon, though the names did include Lung as the first syllable.

It was just another example of the sort of things that I'd picked up in the past few months.

Another thing that I'd picked up? Lung kind of hated having his worth questioned or insulted.

"Yeah, you!" I pointed at him, trying to stop myself from trembling too much. "Question for you."

"Ooo." He grunted the word, his eyes somehow managing to blaze with even more anger.

"Yup." I pointed to myself. "Me. Like I said, I've got a question for you." He grunted, already walking toward me. I didn't know if the grunt was dismissive or acknowledgment, but I pressed on anyway. "When you were born, did they just go ahead and hand your mom the 'biggest loser in the world' award to give to you later, or was there a whole big ceremony involved when you were old enough?"

Even before I finished talking, I was already turning my head. My hand lifted and I attached a line all the way down the hall before yanking myself that way the very instant that the last word left my mouth. Even then, flames filled the area I had been, singing my boots with enough heat that the lockers on either side of the hall were blackened and partially melted.

Yeah, getting touched by that flame was a bad idea. I could only hope that Aid would be able to put them out once the hallway was clear. Right now, I had bigger worries.

Hitting the floor in a roll, I lifted my head long enough to see the nearby stairs. Another line yanked me that way, mere heartbeats before Lung slammed down where I had rolled, his claws punching through the floor like it was tissue paper.

Okay, getting caught by Lung himself so he could snap my bones between his fingers was probably just as bad of an idea as letting his flames touch me. Good to know.

More lines brought me to the top of the stairs and I emerged onto the second floor of the school once more. Below me, I heard Lung's roar of indignation and used a line to yank myself down the hall.

Unfortunately, right as I was being hauled away, Lung burst _**up through**_ the floor. There was a shower of debris and flame, and I was caught by one of the chunks of floor. It was a sledgehammer blow that knocked me off course and into the ceiling before I fell haphazardly to the ruined floor, briefly dazed. Pain filled my body and it was all I could do to roll over before Lung brought his claw down where I had just been. He gave a roar of fury, and his flame flooded the hallway once more. I could feel my suit burning while he stabbed for me again, intent on snatching me up.

I'd recovered somewhat by that point though, and was able to throw myself into a backwards roll, narrowly avoiding his grab once again. My chest screamed, and I was fairly sure that the blow that had knocked me into the ceiling had cracked some ribs.

It hurt to breathe, let alone talk. Yet talk I did. "Have you ever thought of investing in some glasses? Because from what I can tell, you couldn't hit—uh oh." Another line yanked me clear of his lunge, and I kept going with the still transforming man rampaging after me.

The door I was looking for wasn't marked, in order to keep kids away from it. But I knew where it was. Plus it was locked up tight, but that didn't matter. As soon as I saw the innocuous looking brown door next to the trophy case, I planted a line between the floor and the door itself, shoving upward and in with enough force to knock it open.

Stairs lay beyond, and I scrambled up them with Lung right on my heels. The air grew so hot as Lung neared me that I could feel it burning through my costume. Still I kept moving, hitting the door at the top of the stairs with my full body before crashing out into the open sunlight.

In the next second, Lung crashed through to join me on the roof. He was too big by that point to fit through the door itself. Instead, he ripped and tore his way through, sending half-melted debris flying while he gave a deafening roar. Flames shot out to either side when he spotted me, while a pair of wings unfurled. With a hard flap that sent a ring of fire off in its wake, the monster launched himself toward me, howling for my blood.

He might have even gotten me, except that the very instant I emerged onto the roof, I inverted myself and slid _back_ beneath Lung's legs and into the relative safety of the stairwell. He passed over my head, and in the next second, I was briefly deafened by the sound of multiple bombs going off. If I hadn't dived back inside, the janitors would have had to scrape me off the roof with a spatula.

They were standard fire-concussive force explosions, so either Bakuda had been getting lazy, or Lung hadn't wanted her to get too creative with the roof bombs. Maybe he didn't give her the time to. I _almost_ felt absurdly bad for her not getting to express the creative urge her power gave her. And I definitely felt bad about the fact that none of the bombs had done much of anything to Lung other than piss him off even more.

Oh well, I definitely had his attention now. Emerging from my relative cover and planting lines between my feet and the roof, I catapulted myself into the air, flying a good twenty feet up off a single push. Turning that momentum into a backwards flip, I twisted so that I could get a look at a building in the distance. A line between it and my gauntlet sent me sailing that way with Lung literally hot on my heels.

Below me, I caught a glimpse of emergency vehicles, PRT response vans, media, and more. But there wasn't time to waste looking for help. Feeling the heat rising, I released the line on the building so that I could start to fall freely through the air, plummeting for a few precious seconds while a massive fireball filled the air above me. Then I stuck my other hand out and attached a line to a different building, jerking myself out of the fall with a speed that would have made my stomach rise into my throat if it wasn't for the breaker powers that kept me from experiencing the crazy whiplash and nausea that I should have from these maneuvers.

Lung was screaming at me, his words entirely unintelligible, though his meaning was clear. This was between me and him, and he wasn't going to let me get away again.

The second line brought me straight to the side of the office building. Inverting in the air, I attached lines between my feet and the wall itself. The lines held me there against the building, giving me a moment to glance back and see Lung readying another fireball as another flap of his enormous wings propelled him straight toward me with the force and determination of an oncoming train. A train that happened to be on fire.

The fireball growing larger. Worse, a handful of black lines appeared, pointing back into the building itself. When I twisted that way, I could see people inside, gawking at me and watching Lung as if they didn't realize they were about to be right in the path of a hurled orb of fire hot enough to melt through steel.

Cursing, I shoved myself off the side of the building and twisted around in the air. Attaching a line from each gauntlet to the building, I yanked myself forward and straight through the window feet first.

The glass shattered around me as I dropped into a roll, and I heard the people who had been gawking a second earlier just now start to cry out as they realized the danger that they were in. Still, I came out of the roll and to my feet with a glance behind me at the incoming ball of flame. Then I focused, attaching lines to all of the people in the path of the fireball before throwing them, and myself, to the side and out of the way.

The fireball _**slammed**_ into the building, crashing its way through several more windows before shooting across the room and into the opposite wall. The area that the crowd of onlooking office drones had been standing in was briefly engulfed in flame and glass, each of which would have torn through anyone that had been caught in it.

Springing back to my feet, I glanced toward the shaken people while they picked themselves off the floor. "Get the fire department up here to put that out." I pointed to the lingering flames that were starting to take root around what I now saw was a typical cubicle-filled office floor. "Then get out of the building. Go!"

Leaving them to do that, I attached a line to the edge of the hole that had been made in the side of the building and used it to hurl myself back out into the air in front of Lung.

"Have you put any thought into my glasses suggestion? I really think it would do this threatening people thing a lot of good if you could hit the broad side of a barn."

Once again, we were off. Lung screamed his threats, hurling more fire my way while I flung myself from building to building, always only a handful of feet ahead of the flames that would have killed me instantly. I plunged headfirst around glass and brick structures, weaving my way through the city skyline. With each passing second, I used every single trick I could to stay ahead of Lung and away from his fireballs. I alternated between freefall and steep climb, using lines to yank myself violently off-course every few seconds. Yet Lung kept getting closer. Sooner or later, I would mess up, zig when I should have zagged, and it would be over.

Finally, I swung off a line, turning it from a pull into a push at the last second to hurl myself into the open space above the same construction lot where we had fought the Outliars' minions.

Briefly, I set my feet against the side of the massive tower crane on the edge of the lot. "Hey Lung!" I called back to my pursuer. "Let's settle this." Then I used a line to yank myself straight down to the ground.

I landed in the dirt, looking up in time to see Lung come down about fifty feet away from me. He was even larger now, a little over sixteen feet in height. More fire swirled around his impregnably armored body, and he let out a roar of triumph as he stood there, towering over me.

He grunted some sounds that seemed to be a question, and I shook my head. "I'm not running anymore, Lung. And I'm not gonna let you kill anybody else ever again. You're done. But I'm giving you one more chance. Surrender, Lung. I'll make sure you're not killed. I'll get you back to the Birdcage, and you can just... live. Let this go, Lung. There's no walking back from this. Either you surrender and walk back to the PRT with me... or you don't walk away. Please. Please surrender."

The sound that the man made then sounded like a chuckle, and he readied the flame to obliterate me. Before he could release it and do away with me once and for all, I raised both hands above my head. "Fine, one question for you! Do you know where we are?"

The dragon-like figure turned its head a little, obviously suspicious but uncertain. So I continued. "We're three blocks from the school. It's over that way." I pointed with a finger. "We just went in one big circle." At his further noise of confusion, I smiled behind my mask. "Because I needed to give my teammates time to get here first after you so generously cleared the roof of bombs so they could get out. That's the difference between you and me. I trust my team. I trust my friends."

With those words, I looked up and finished attaching the lines from my gauntlets to the middle of the massive, two hundred foot long boom of the crane that towered over us. Then I gave the hardest _**yank**_ that I could. The boom was ripped off the side of the crane where Kid Win and Reach had weakened it. It came plummeting down toward us while I released those lines and used more to hurl myself backwards and out of the way.

Lung barely had time to look up and make a grunt of confusion before the end of the crane's boom, **empowered by Flechette**, fell straight through the enormous armored man, shearing him in half.

**Interlude 21 – Mnemosyne**

_November 20th, 2010 _

It was a little past midnight, and the glow of a nearby neon sign advertising booze was all that illuminated the two figures standing in the doorway of the liquor store. One was hunched over the door itself, while the other kept watch with a bat on one hand.

"Amanda, are you sure you know what you're doing?" The lookout, a tall boy who looked every bit the linebacker that he was, checked over his shoulder to see how things were coming along. "Why isn't it open yet?" His voice was slightly muffled by the ski mask that he wore.

Fifteen-year old Amanda Rhodes turned her head to glare at the slightly older boy. She wore a jean jacket over a ratty old flannel tee-shirt, along with a pair of baggy black jeans. A simple ski mask covered her face as well.

"Why isn't it open?" She echoed. "Because some cock-knob keeps interrupting me, that's why. Now shut the fuck up. And just so you know, one of the rules about doing illegal things is that you don't-" Her voice dropped into an angry hiss. "-fucking announce each other's names while you're doing it. Now shut up and let me focus. I've almost got it."

Carl, the seventeen-year old football player, made a face but didn't say anything else. Amanda shook her head and returned her attention to the lockpicks, carefully twisting and testing for several more moments until the door clicked. The sound made her smile in triumph. Who said she didn't have a future? Her skills were just the kind you didn't put on a resume.

"Okay, got it." The young teenager straightened, putting out a hand to stop Carl from barging straight in. "Wait. Remember, the alarm goes off in thirty seconds if the code isn't put in. Since we don't _**know**_ the code, the alarm **will** go off. We don't push further than thirty seconds past that point before we get the hell out of this place before anyone gets here. So sixty seconds. You ready?"

Carl nodded once, lifting the aluminum bat. "Ready."

Grabbing her own bat from where it had been leaning, Amanda shoved the door open and rushed inside. She took three quick steps into the liquor store before swinging the bat as hard as she could. It _slammed_ through several bottles, sending alcohol spraying everywhere with a satisfying crash.

Behind her, Carl went to work smashing everything he could on one of the other shelves on his way back to the coolers. His bat went through the glass there before the boy began to grab as many packs of bottles as he could, throwing them across the room to crash into the far wall.

For thirty seconds, Amanda gloried in the destruction of every bit of product she could reach with her bat. She attacked the alcohol with a purpose, gleefully breaking every last bottle.

With thirty seconds left on her watch, she moved to the wall with the most space and tugged a can of red spray paint out, shaking it up quickly before she began to write on the wall, encouraging her companion. "Keep going. Break everything, all of it."

After a moment, she stepped back to admire her work. The paint on the wall read 'Death Peddler.' She liked the word peddler. It was a funny word that sounded kind of dirty. Peddler.

One more glance at her watch showed that time was up, and Amanda prodded Carl with her bat before heading for the door. "Come on, come on!"

The two teenagers ran for the door, spilling out onto the street before sprinting away. They ran a single block, then turned right down an alley and ran some more before reaching the next street over. Without hesitation, they went straight for the nearby apartment building, cutting across the basketball court to reach the back parking lot. By the time the sound of sirens reached them, the pair were already heading for the back door of the apartment building.

Carl, whose flat, bulldog-like face would never be considered attractive, stripped off his mask and shook his dark hair out to its impressive length before shoving the door open. He held it there in some mockery of chivalry. "After you, milady." His attempt at a posh accent was appalling.

Amanda rolled her eyes and turned to chuck the used spray paint can into the nearby dumpster before stripping off her own ski mask. Beneath that was a face that looked cherubic and innocent, belying the constant and barely suppressed rage she felt pretty much all the time. Her hair, originally blonde but currently dyed a light blue, was cut short so that it fell just barely below her ears.

Shoving the mask into her jacket pocket, she went in and headed up the nearby stairs. Amanda felt hyped up, she felt ready to do anything. The adrenaline rush made her feel alive.

Following her up the stairs, Carl asked, "Hey, what do you think your brother would say if he knew what you were up to?"

Amanda snorted at the question. "Probably try to ground me or something. He thinks he has to act all responsible and shit just because Grandpa's too old to give a shit anymore."

On the third floor, she used her key to unlock the door of the apartment that she shared with her brother and grandfather before looking back at the boy and gracing him with a rare smile. "Thanks, Carl. That prick had it coming, selling that shit."

"Hey, it was fun." Carl shrugged. "I mean, most people don't break into a liquor store to _break_ everything, but you know... I get it, with your folks getting into that accident and all."

"_**They**_ didn't get into an accident." Amanda snapped at him. "They were minding their own business when the cocksucker that was fucking drunk and high hit them. And that place back there sells both. Booze out the front, drugs out the back. Fucking alcohol. Fucking drugs. I wish I could fucking burn all of it. Just get rid of the shit forever."

"Guess we'll have to go one liquor store at a time instead, huh?" Carl winked at her before sobering. "We uhh, we **are** gonna get back to doing jobs that actually get some money, right? I'm still trying to get enough for a car. There's this sweet GTO down at Smith's that-"

"Yeah, yeah, Carl." Amanda waved that off. "Normal jobs too. There's this gas station on Forty-Seventh. The new guy keeps leaving the cash in the register instead of the safe when he closes up. We'll hit 'em tomorrow if you're up for it. In and out real quick."

"Hey, sounds good to me." The boy gave her a thumbs up before stepping away from the door.

Amanda watched him go, then stepped into the apartment and closed the door after herself, satisfied, for the moment, with a job well done. Alcohol and drugs had killed her parents. Her brother dealt with that loss in his way, and she dealt with it in hers.

Less than twenty-four hours later, what little remained of Carl's body was found in a ditch.

* * *

><p><em>September 10th, 2011 (Three Days Ago)<em>

"You sure this is gonna work?" Amanda spoke the words aloud in a deeper voice than her normal one as she crouched on a rooftop, using a pair of binoculars to watch the pool hall across the street. After a moment, she spoke in her normal voice. "Shut up, Carl."

She had to talk for him now, had to voice the boy's objections, thoughts, and fears. Because he wasn't there to voice them anymore. Because those _**fucks**_ that worked for the Merchants had killed him.

Apparently the liquor store the two of them had hit was owned by someone who was tight with that gang, and they hadn't taken kindly to the place being trashed. One of their lookouts had jumped Carl on his way out of her building. They'd tortured him first, that much was obvious. But he clearly hadn't told them who his partner had been, because no one had come for her.

Yeah, they'd tortured and fucking _**killed**_ that dork because he helped her trash a god damn liquor store. She'd even gone to the cops, had told them what they did and who they should look at for the murder. And what had the cops done? They threw**her** into juvie for eight months for what she did to that liquor store. And then proceeded to fucking ignore the information she'd given them. Carl's death had been dismissed as unsolved and they just moved on.

Those eight months in juvie had hardened Amanda even more. Before, she had simply wanted to burn the businesses to the ground. Then they killed her friend, and now she wanted to burn _**them**_.

Of course by the time she'd gotten out, the Merchants were pretty much completely finished. Some parahuman saint that deserved a god damn medal had been taking them out, and the gang leadership itself was pretty much finished.

Unfortunately, the actual foot soldiers, the regular gang members that pushed their garbage, were still around. They'd just gravitated to a new gang. Lung's gang, to be precise. They were still peddling (a word that still managed to make her smile sometimes) their shit.

In Amanda's opinion, the only mistake that this so-called 'bug girl' had made was not killing _**each and every single one of the gang members**_ already.

It was a mistake that she was going to correct. Checking the binoculars once more, she watched as three of Lung's non-powered thugs came staggering out of the pool hall. Slapping each other on the back and laughing uproariously, the trio made their way toward a pick-up truck that was parked in the corner of the lot.

They were so plastered none of them could walk straight, and they were still about to drive off. Remembering her parents, the now sixteen-year old girl growled under her breath before reaching down to pick up the remote to the bomb that she had placed under their truck.

She'd learned how to make them from her cell mate in juvie, who had worked for Uber and Leet for awhile. It wasn't anything special, but it would get the job done.

Waiting until all three men had gotten into the truck and started it up, Amanda smiled grimly and hit the button. She had to look away from the sudden flash of bright light as the truck was incinerated instead of watching it go up the way she'd wanted to, but the job was done. Those three fucks wouldn't be selling their shit to anyone else.

The police sirens had started to blare already by the time the girl picked herself up and turned to abandon her vigil. Turning, she found the way blocked by another figure. Immediately, she grabbed the tiny revolver that she'd hidden in her jacket and lifted the gun. "Who's there?!"

"Easy there." The person took a small step forward to come into the light, revealing a female figure in a light green cloak that covered most of her form, allowing only a glimpse of the black body armor beneath. The dark mask that covered her face was featureless save for the spot where the eyes would have been. In those two spots were the images of a pair of tiny hourglasses that were lit by the glowing gold sand within. The glowing 'sand' within each would fall through the hourglass for about sixty seconds (each thirty seconds off from the other) before flipping over. It was clearly a hologram or something displayed on the otherwise blank metal mask, but it was a very effective one.

Looking the figure up and down, Amanda thought her pistol was probably horribly inadequate. "What do you want? Who the f-fuck are you?"

The figure with the hourglass eyes slowly lifted their hands in a gesture of peace. "Calm down, Amanda. I'm not here to hurt you or fight. I'm here to help."

"Fuck you, how do you know my name?" Amanda spat, the gun shaking a bit in her hand.

"I've been keeping an eye on you for awhile." The figure replied quietly. "Making sure you were the kind of person that I wanted to recruit." She nodded past Amanda toward the burning vehicle below. "Now I have my answer." Slowly, the figure lowered her hands. "You can call me Clepsydra. I think we can help each other."

"Help each other?" Amanda snorted in disbelief, but she did lower the gun after a moment of hesitation. "You got the wrong girl, Chlamydia. I'm not a gang lackey."

"It's Clepsydra." The figure corrected. "And I don't want a lackey. I want someone I can trust. You want to burn Lung's gang to the ground. You hate the cops for throwing you in juvenile detention. You hate an awful lot of people, Amanda. I can help you channel that hate into getting what you want."

"That right?" Amanda lifted her chin. "What's in it for you?"

Clepsydra's voice was casual as she replied, "What's in it for me is a person who can help me accomplish my own goals. I want to take over the underworld of this city, Amanda. And if you help me do that, we can run all the drugs out of town. If you help me, and you want them gone, they'll be gone."

Amanda gave a brief laugh of disbelief. "What makes you think I can help you do that? In case it escaped your notice, I ain't got no powers or nothing. I mean, don't get me wrong, you wanna fuck up Lung's group, all the more power to ya. But I don't see where I come in."

"Where you come in... is this." Clepsydra reached into her cloak slowly, other hand raised placatingly when Amanda stiffened, before pulling out a small vial.

"What's that?" She demanded a little nervously.

"This?" Clepsydra seemed to study the vial she was holding. "... is how you're going to become a cape so that you can help me destroy our competition."

* * *

><p><em>September 12th (Yesterday)<em>

"I need to talk to Lung." Amanda announced, standing in front of the heavyset man who was blocking the way into the nightclub that Clepsydra had tracked down as being the Birdcage escapee's current base of operations. It was the middle of the day, so the club was empty. Yet the bouncer still sat there steering people away from the place.

The man gave her a brief, disbelieving glance before shaking his head as his attention turned back to his phone. "Beat it, little bitch. Ain't no one here for you."

Rolling her eyes, Amanda exercised her new power. Her voice took on a slightly echoing tone. "I told you why I wanted to see Lung. You thought it was a very compelling reason, and now you can't wait to take me to meet with him. You think that Lung is going to be really pissed off if you make him wait any longer to talk to me."

A moment after she finished talking, the man, whose eyes had glazed over while she gave her instructions and rewrote his memory with the new story, snapped to attention. Stumbling off his stool, he grabbed the door and wrenched it open before ushering her inside. "C'mon then, stop wasting time. Lung's gotta hear this."

Smirking to herself, Amanda let herself be led across the empty nightclub floor toward a door marked 'manager' in the corner. The bouncer took her up a short flight of stairs and then to an unlabeled door down the hall.

Before he could raise his hand to knock, Amanda spoke up before he could. "You took me in, Lung liked your initiative and then told you to go back to doing your job."

The man blinked a few times, looking around before smiling in satisfaction as he turned and began to return to his post at the front door.

Watching the man leave, Amanda couldn't help but giggle a little to herself before turning to try the door. Finding it unlocked, she pushed it open and stepped into the place that had to be Lung's private office. Or at least the place he was using as an office for the time being. Apparently being an escapee from the Birdcage meant that he had to move around a lot.

The two men inside the office, Lung and Oni Lee, both whirled at the sound of the door opening. They were standing in front of a large tank full of tropical fish, apparently having been deeply engaged in conversation.

"Lee-"

Lung began to give his second-in-command orders about dealing with her, but Amanda spoke up quickly, her voice once again echoing slightly. "Both of you asked me to be here because I'm one of your thugs."

The annoyance in Lung's voice didn't change, though his reasoning did. "You are late."

Stepping fully into the room and closing the door behind her, Amanda crossed to where the two men stood. Oni Lee's eyes were narrowed, his suspicion not entirely averted by her power, even if he didn't know exactly why he was suspicious. At least now he thought of her as a minion that he didn't entirely trust, instead of a complete stranger that he didn't trust.

"What do you have to report?" Lung demanded. Clearly he was trying to remember what he'd sent her out to do.

"Hookay, here goes." Taking in a breath and then letting it out, Amanda ran a hand back through her short, dyed blue hair before getting right to it. It hadn't taken long, once she and Clepsydra realized what power the vial had given her, for them to come up with this plan. It wasn't perfect, but it should get the job done well enough.

Calling on her power, she began to talk."The two of you came up with a great plan to deal with the shame that Lung feels because of the way the Wards keep kicking his ass. You're going to invade Arcadia High School and force them to expose themselves..."

* * *

><p><em>September 13th (Present Day) <em>

"I don't believe it." Amanda, who had finally decided on the name Mnemosyne at Clepsydra's suggestion, sat on the living room couch, staring at the television report. "They actually killed him. They killed Lung."

Sitting beside her, costume removed to reveal a dark-haired girl with pale aristocratic features, Clepsydra smiled. "Either way, Lung would have been finished after today. He broke all the rules and attacked the Wards out-of-costume. He attacked a school, a school that Marquis' daughter attends. I admit, I expected him to be caught, either now or later when the wrath of the entire Protectorate descended on him, but death works too."

"So what now?" Amanda asked, smiling as she watched more of the news about how Lung's 'plan' had backfired so tremendously. If only they knew.

"Now," Clepsydra answered, "leadership of Lung's gang will be up for grabs. They've got no direction, no purpose. And I have just the person in mind who can grab it."

"No drugs." Amanda pressed firmly. "Drug pushers get run the hell out of town. Alcohol... fine whatever, people drink, I guess I get it. But no drugs. And anyone that drinks and drives goes down. No warnings. They're done. They wanna drink, they can be responsible about it."

The older girl nodded. "Of course. That was the deal, and I keep my deals. No drugs, responsible drinking. No warnings."

"Good." Smiling a little more satisfaction, Amanda asked, "You really think you can take over the crime in this city?"

Clepsydra leaned back, stretching lazily on the couch. "With your help? Yeah, I think we can." She turned back to the report on the television before adding, "After all, that's one gang down."

"One to go."


	22. Arc 22: Triumph

_**Notes:** Moka-girl - Congrats on catching up with the story! Updated the bit with 'prophesy/prophecy' that you pointed out, thank you very much. As for how Sparrow's powers work, she basically has a list of possible powers in her head that she can imbue an object with. She can only have 5 actively imbued items at a time. It takes her about a week to imbue an object with a power, during which time she can't use one of her '5 active powers slots' because it's being used to 'train' the new power until it takes hold. When she activates an item's power, there's a recharge time after she stops using it before she can use it again. This recharge time gets shorter the longer she keeps that item rather than replacing it with a new power. _

_Anyway, enjoy the new chapter. :)_

**22.01**

"Dennis was right, you are pretty much the worst driver in the history of drivers." Marissa announced a few nights after the events at Arcadia. It was Friday night, and we were using the fact that neither of us had patrol or any kind of emergency to deal with to go on an actual date. If something _didn't_ interrupt, I was going to convince Mars to go out and buy a few dozen lottery tickets.

Flushing at the other girl's words, I waved both hands around. "Hey, we made it, didn't we?"

Mars was smiling as she leaned her head to look out the passenger side window. "By the strictest definition of the term, yeah, we made it." She turned back to poke my side, teasing, "Don't worry, you just need practice." Her attention returned to the window to look at the tire tracks in the grass from the far-too-sharp of a turn that I'd taken to get into the lot. "Lots and lots of practice."

Blushing even more, I took the keys out of the ignition and handed them over to her. "Maybe I should just stick to my normal travel method. Driving and me just don't seem to be clicking."

"Aww." Turning a little in her seat, Marissa used her hand to turn me back toward her so she could give me a soft kiss that made my heart flip up and over a few times. "You'll get it." She assured me quietly while her hand tenderly brushed over my cheek. "I believe in you."

Losing my train of thought as I looked back her her, it took me a few moments to find a response. Finally, I gave a full-body shiver of pleasure and smiled. "Wow, if you said that to a dead guy, I'm pretty sure he'd manage to come back to life and tap dance just because you wanted him to."

This time it was Marissa's turn to blush, and she moved her hand to briefly stroke my hair before pulling back. "Good thing it's you I want and not a tap dancing dead guy, huh?"

For a moment, we just sat there, smiling stupidly at each other before we eventually opened our doors and got out of the car. I flinched at the rather dismal parking job that I'd done. "Okay, maybe you should fix this before we go in there." I waved my hand toward the movie theater across the lot. "I'd hate to piss some guy off into scratching up your nice, pretty car just because I can't park straight."

Snickering in spite of herself, Mars slipped past me and patted my head. "Oh well, at least you're cute."

"Damn straight." I agreed, giving her a thumbs up. "I'm freaking adorable."

Soon enough, Marissa had fixed my awful parking job, and the two of us began to head for the theater. As we walked, I caught my girlfriend's hand and squeezed it. For the moment, I felt nothing but contentment with where I was and who I was with.

The last few days had been busy and, for lack of a better term, loud. There were briefings with half a dozen different PCIPS and PRT suits, public relations interviews to assure the public that we weren't being taught to kill, but that it had been an extraordinary circumstance, and even a couple of special psychologist visits to determine how our whole team was doing with what had happened. They were particularly concerned about how Lily and I felt after the deaths of Impasse and Lung. Not only had school been canceled for at least a week while they made repairs, but all of us, the entire team, had also been given a mandatory two week break from anything barring an S-Class emergency. That meant no training, no patrols, nothing but rest and fun to recharge. Oh, and more debriefings with what seemed like every last member of the Protectorate/PRT/PCIPS joint organization. **Everyone** wanted to hear about what happened straight from our own lips, and they all had a million questions.

Not to mention the public's reaction. The fact that the Wards had managed to defeat Lung and his gang after being caught flat-footed in school, after he had fought entire teams to a stand-still, had a lot of people going overboard on what they thought we were capable of. PHO had exploded with theoretical matches between our team and various others, hero and villain alike. It kind of scared me how much fun people had theorizing about different fights that, if they happened, would have been traumatic and horrible for those of us that had to act in them.

But tonight was about Mars and me. Scion willing, we were going to have as much fun as possible.

While we crossed the lot, Marissa glanced slyly toward me. Her voice was quiet enough that no one could overhear. "So apparently there's this rumor going around that you and Kid Win are an item."

I choked at that, all-but tripping over my own two feet to the point that Mars had to catch my arm so that I wouldn't fall on my face. "There's a what in the who where now?"

Giggling, Marissa patted my shoulder consolingly. "If it makes you feel any better, Crystal said that was pretty much Chris's reaction too. Except for the part where he walked into a wall."

My face was pink. "Why would anyone think—I mean he's my friend and—I mean why would they decide that we're an item or whatever? What reasoning or evidence did we give them?"

Mars shrugged at that. "They're shippers, Madison. They don't need evidence or reasoning to ship something. Someone, somewhere, saw you look at him for longer than half a second, and now there's entire websites devoted to documenting entire soap operas worth of your ongoing relationship drama."

My arms flew up in the air. "_**What**_ ongoing relationship drama? We don't have relationship drama because we don't have a relationship. I mean, he's my friend but not like that."

Still smiling at my confusion, Marissa gave my hand a squeeze. "Don't feel bad. Apparently the person I get shipped with the most is Miss Militia." Seeing the expression on my face, she laughed out loud. "I don't know either! I guess I give off the gay thing or whatever."

"How does she feel about it?" I wondered, slowly slightly to finish the discussion before we got too near the crowd around the ticket booth.

Mars snickered to herself. "She said that I could forget about the shotgun wedding everyone seems to think we're going to have, because she wants the full works, and that I should be ready to woo her, damn it. Which surprised me, because you know, I would've thought a shotgun wedding was her thing."

By that point, we had reached the public area around the ticket stand and stopped talking about private things while we bought tickets and headed into the building.

A few minutes later, the two of us stood in the lobby with a big bucket of popcorn to share and a drink for each of us. Marissa held the bucket up for my inspection, adopting a somewhat posh accent. "Extra butter and salt, precisely as requested. Does it meet your requirements, milady?"

I answered her by opening my mouth wide and lowering my head to scarf a big mouthful of popcorn right off the top of the bucket. "Yuuuuummmphhmm."

Giggling, Mars pulled the bucket away and kissed my forehead. "I see it meets with your approval."

"Almost... it's missing something to taste perfect." I pretended to consider what it could be for a second, then took up a large popped kernel before gently brushing it across Marissa's mouth while she gasped. Finally, I popped it into my own mouth and chewed. "There, now _**that's**_ perfect."

It took Mars a moment to recover from that, but once she did, her smile turned wily. "Mental note, Mads really likes the taste of lip gloss on her food."

The two of us laughed out loud, ignoring the stares of passersby before heading in to enjoy our movie, as well as the rest of the evening.

* * *

><p>The <em><strong>next<strong>_ evening, Saturday, I was also enjoying myself but in a different way. I was _enjoying_ kicking Dennis's butt at the dance rhythm game in the local arcade. By the end of our latest set, I was still bouncing and ready to go on while he all-but collapsed, hunching over while breathing hard. He squinted at me suspiciously. "You're cheating. I'm not sure how, but you are. Having that much energy after something like that isn't normal."

I just grinned back at him and bounced a little more on the little glowing circles that marked where you were supposed to put your feet. "Aww, does that mean you don't wanna go again?"

The poor boy was saved from replying by an unfamiliar girl with long, jet-black hair and an elfin face, who walked right up to us and spoke in a quiet voice. "Hey, there might be a ummm, a problem."

Dennis and I both stared at the girl uncomprehendingly. "Do, uhhh, we know you?" I asked hesitantly.

The girl blinked at me in confusion for a moment before starting. "What do you mean do you-Oh! I—sorry. It's Amy. I'm Amy, I mean." She blushed and waved a hand. "Look, I swear it's me. I'll explain umm... back here." The girl gestured for us to accompany her to a private corner of the arcade, away from where the crowd was.

Exchanging a glance with Dennis, I finally shrugged and followed the strange girl who said she was Amy. Whatever this turned out to be, it was bound to be interesting.

Leading us to the corner of the arcade, the girl looked around to make sure we weren't being watched. Then she reached up to two different spots on her neck and pinched them hard while apologizing. "Sorry, I forgot I was testing this thing."

"Testing wha-" Dennis managed to get out before both of us yelped as the face in front of us seemed to _dissolve _into Amy's real face. Her hair also lightened and curled out a bit.

Mouth hanging open for a moment, I finally managed a weak, "What... what? You can't change yourself though. I mean... you can't, right?"

"Right." She nodded. "This is just a bio-disguise system that Riley and I were working on. It's still a prototype, but I guess it worked well enough to fool you guys." Amy was smiling a little bit. "I guess I kind of liked being able to walk around without having everybody pay attention to me. Not that I hate healing people or anything, but a little bit of privacy is nice."

"You and Riley are still working on things?" Dennis stared at her. "After what happened with Sophia?"

She flushed a little. "Of course. Our stuff can help people. And what's Riley supposed to do, just not use her power? I'm helping her channel it without being destructive."

Pushing past that before Dennis could argue, I asked, "You said there was a problem?"

"Maybe." She amended. "Maybe there's a problem. I ummm... Riley sort of took off."

My eyes widened at that, my mind rushing into a dozen different scenarios, none of them good. "What do you mean, she took off? Where'd she go?"

Quickly, Amy's head shook. "Nothing really bad or anything, don't worry. What I mean is, she took off to ummm..." She shifted uneasily, eyes flicking back and forth. "... to patrol."

Once again, both Dennis and I stared at her with open mouths, trying to cope with her words. This time, it was Dennis who found his voice first. "Patrol? As in chasing down criminals? Well that thought just made me pee a little."

Amy started to elaborate, but hesitated. "Listen, Lambda and Emma are here too. They can help but..." She gestured to Dennis. "Emma doesn't know who he is."

"Say no more." Dennis waved a hand. "I'll go practice with our game. Let me know what's up."

He moved back into the crowd, and a moment later, two other girls approached. One of them looked identical to Amy's previous disguised appearance, while the other was a small Hispanic-looking girl who was eating a cheeseburger and clearly enjoying it a lot.

The one that looked exactly like Amy's disguised self stepped to where we were, her voice quiet and hesitant. "I... ummm... I f-found her with the ummm... traffic... camera s-system. One of the ummm... the main c-computers for it is across the street."

"Emma?" I asked, staring at the disguised figure. "You're using one of those things too?"

Looking up at me uncomprehendingly for a second, Emma finally remembered the disguise and reached toward her neck. She hesitated though, and then lowered her hands while nodding. "Y-yes." Clearly torn for a moment, she added in an even quieter voice. "I'm g-glad that... that you're okay."

Realizing what she meant, that I hadn't seen her since the whole thing with Lung, I stepped over and gave the girl a brief but tight hug. "Thanks, Emma. We're all okay."

Releasing her after a moment, I stepped back and looked to the Hispanic girl. "Lambda?"

"Yes, Madison-Friend." She confirmed with a wide smile before taking another bite of her cheeseburger. I had noticed before that of all the Pandoras, Lambda was the one that had first managed to convey a smile that didn't look terrifying.

Returning her smile briefly, I asked, "Okay, what's this about Riley going on patrol? What patrol?"

The other girls glanced at one another, before Amy explained. "A hero patrol. She sort of... went off with her disguise to patrol like a real cape. She said that since you Wards were on vacation, somebody had to help take up the slack."

My mouth opened and shut. "You mean Riley really **is** out there in her disguise, actively trying to stop criminals?" My brain started playing the equivalent of an air raid siren in my head at the thought of how something like that might go. Not that I didn't trust Riley to _**try**_ to do the right thing at this point, but she was still rather vague on little things like acceptable force and not horrifying everyone she talked to.

Amy shifted on her feet. "We were hoping you might be able to go out with her, maybe... guide her a little so that nothing goes too wrong? She'll listen to what you say. She still idolizes you."

I nodded at that. "Yeah, I...I'll help her." I didn't even think about the fact that I was supposed to be on a mandatory break. This was more important. And it wasn't just fear of what Riley might do without thinking she was doing anything wrong. I also felt protective of Riley herself. She'd never been out as a hero before. She didn't even have any backup, unless... "What about Pandora?"

"Riley-Friend did not desire our company," Lambda replied.

"None of them went with her." Amy went on with a wince. "She ummm, she asked them to let her go by herself and not follow her so that she could see what being a hero was like. But we're sure that she won't mind _you_ coming around for a team-up. That's why we came to find you."

"A team-up," I echoed bluntly, looking back and forth between the two girls before sighing. "All right. Let me let... my friend know what's going on." Clearly Emma not knowing Dennis's identity was awkward, but that was his secret to keep. "Then I'll go find Riley for a... team-up. Emma, can you meet us outside to let me know where I'm going?"

She nodded a little distractedly and headed out, while Amy, Lambda, and I went explain things to Dennis.

He agreed with my going out to help guide Riley so she didn't go overboard. "But for the record," he added. "This means you forfeit our rematch and I win." He gestured back toward the dance game.

"Pfffft. Fat chance." I shook my head. "I just need a stand-in. Lambda? Think you can stay with Amy here and beat Dennis at our dancing game while Emma and I find Riley?"

"Oh, yes, Madison-Friend." Lambda's head bobbed in happy agreement. "But we are afraid that if we do not finish our delicious cheeseburger first, there will be too many on the machine."

I blinked a few times at that. "Why would taking a cheeseburger on the machine make there be too many?"

"Because, Madison-Friend." She gave me another wide smile, waving the bread of her burger toward me. "Then there would be a-bun-dance."

**22.02**

"Halt, evil-doers!"

As I landed on the edge of a rooftop, my eyes scanned the street below until I found the source of the commanding voice. Riley was there, standing in the middle of the sidewalk in her Bones costume/flesh-mech. Her hand was raised in a 'stop' motion, while her other fist rested against her hip in what was obviously her approximation of a super hero pose.

Her chosen targets happened to be a gang of four or five thugs that had apparently been breaking into a small organic grocery store that had closed for the evening. They whirled at the sound of Riley's (altered to sound slightly older and male) voice, then stood there and stared.

One of the group, the only female, lifted her chin challengingly. "Who the fuck are you supposed to be?" She looked the new figure up and down. "Not a Ward, ain't Protectorate. Some dumbass out playing Halloween?" She laughed, and the guys laughed with her.

I tensed, but didn't move. I would go down and help if and when Riley needed it. But for the moment, I wanted to give her the chance to handle this. I thought it was a big part of her growth, and if I immediately jumped in like I didn't trust her at all, I could hurt things more than I helped them.

Riley started to walk that way. "The name is Bones. And you are villains. I command you to surrender."

The group all laughed, heads shaking in amusement. One of the guys waved a hand at the approaching figure. "Seriously, who is this guy? Is that you, Charlie? You fucking with us?"

"Hey! You're already in trouble, Mister!" Riley informed the man, the deep male voice of the suit sounding oddly prim. "Don't make things worse for yourself by having a potty mouth."

Again, the thugs exchanged disbelieving looks. Before Riley could get too close, the girl and one of the other guys both produced pistols and pointed them at her. "That's close enough." The girl looked Riley up and down again. "Ain't funny no more. You run along now before we gotta perverate a bitch."

"Perforate." Riley corrected. "If you're gonna threaten somebody, you gotta use the right word or you just look dumb." The female-thug's face reddened, but before she could say anything else, Riley gasped. Her attention was on the grocery they had been breaking into. "You vile fiends! I know what you were planning!" While the group stared back in confusion, she lifted a hand to point into the store. "You were going to replace all the eggs in the store with biologically altered parasite eggs so that when people eat them, the parasite grows in their stomach until it bursts out of their chest and goes on a killing spree, laying more eggs in people until the whole city falls into your evil hands!"

A thoroughly confused thug raised his hand uncertainly while the rest stared open-mouthed. "Uhh... we were just... gonna steal some cash from the register."

Riley, or rather, Bones, tilted her head in disbelief. "Really? Geeze, that's totally lame, guys. Were you at least gonna leave behind a flesh-melting gas to kill off anybody else that went in the store after you?"

"Uhh... No?" One of the other thugs offered weakly.

"You're just stealing cash?" Riley sounded aghast and disappointed. "Is that even illegal?"

Completely flummoxed by this point, one of the thugs waved his arms helplessly. "I... I can't deal with this, man. I gotta..." He turned to leave, hands thrown up in utter confusion.

"Hey!" Riley pointed at him. "You're not allowed to leave. I'm... eighty percent sure you're breaking the law right now. Breaking it really, really lamely, but still. You've gotta surrender and go to jail. Or... whatever. Wait, do you really go to jail for stupid, boring crimes like that? Oooh ooh, can they make you go to jail longer because it's so lame?"

"Okay, that's it. You get the fuck outta here, bitch." The female thug pointed her gun at Riley. I tensed, but there was no danger line so, for the moment, I waited to see what the other girl would do. "You get outta here, or I swear I'll put a bullet in your fucking head."

"You say lots of bad words." Riley chastised before starting to walk that way once more. Before she could take more than a couple steps, the other girl pulled the trigger, the gun bucking in her hand.

There was little reaction at all from Bones. The head sort of jerked a tiny bit, almost like flinching away from a mosquito. Other than that, Riley just kept walking. "Oooh, you shot me! I _**know**_ that's illegal. Thanks! Now I really can arrest you." She sounded thrilled.

Both the female thug and the other armed guy started firing then. They managed to get off two shots each, neither of which did anything. Then Bones' hand found the woman's gun and yanked it away from her, crushing the weapon easily before tossing it aside. In the same motion, Riley brought the other arm up, and a cloud of red gas shot out into the woman's face. I had a brief second of panic as the girl collapsed, but a second later her voice shouted, "What the fuck, I can't move!"

"Paralyzing gas." Riley announced, putting a foot on the fallen woman. "You're under arrest. Now the rest of you can come quietly, or-" They broke and scattered, running in every direction. "Hey! If you'd let me finish, you'd know 'going home' wasn't one of the options, jerks!"

Taking that as my cue, I used a line to yank myself down beside her. "Hey R—Bones." I corrected myself just in time. "You need some help?"

"Tether!" Riley sounded happy to see me. "Nah, I got 'em. Check _this_ out." Reaching into her duster, she withdrew a baseball-sized lump of purple flesh with tiny nubs all over it. Then she turned toward one of the fleeing men, the other one that had been armed. Rearing back, Riley threw the 'ball' after him. It soared through the air, and as it flew, the nubs extended into a dozen thin tentacles. When the thing crashed into the running man's back, the tentacles immediately lashed out to wrap around the man, entangling his arms and legs to bring him to the ground where he twisted and writhed helplessly.

Next, Riley turned toward the pair of thugs that had taken off running another way together. This time, she produced what looked like a small mechanical mouse with emerald eyes. It perked up in her hand and looked around while Riley cooed at it a little. "Ready, Solomon? Go get 'em!" She threw the mouse, and it hit the ground before taking off to chase the men down. The little thing moved so fast I could barely track it, racing along the street until it caught up with one of the men. Leaping, the thing crawled up the man's back and seemed to nip him in the neck. He fell face-first to the ground while the mouse-bot jumped from his shoulder to land on the second man's neck, bringing him down as well with a single bite. The two lay completely still, howling about how they couldn't move.

"Robo-mouse?" I asked curiously while the thing came trotting back to us, clearly pleased with itself.

"Dinah said robo-spiders were scary. And that I should use something different anyway." Riley explained, stooping to pick up the mouse-bot before turning in a circle. "Now where's that last guy..." The costume's head tilted back to look straight up while she gave a loud, piercing whistle then.

"What're you—" I managed to get out before a dark shape came flying down out of the sky. I yelped and jumped back in surprise, just as what looked like a cross between an owl and a bat landed on Bones's outstretched arm. It shifted around to look my way briefly, giving me a better look at the thing. It was all black, with the body and wings of a bat, while the head was shaped and positioned more like an owl. It also had not two, but four feet with talons. Perhaps even more creepy were the thing's eyes. They were huge, like the owl its head resembled, but they were also compound, like a fly. "What the- What's that thing?" I tried to resist the urge to smack it.

"My look-out, Spectacles!" Riley sounded absurdly proud. "Okay, Spectacles, there's one more bad guy. You know where he went?" The... bird... bat... thing made a sort of crow-like cawing noise, and Riley bounced in excitement (an odd look for the full-grown male suit) "Show us!"

The flying thing, Spectacles apparently, took off and began to fly away. Riley grabbed my hand and started to run after it. "C'mon, Tether! We can catch him!"

Quickly, I attached a pair of lines to the two paralyzed men down one end of the street, and yanked them in to lay next to the paralyzed woman in front of the store. Then I turned to use another line to yank the man that was tangled up and imprisoned by the tentacles, depositing him there as well so that they would all be in one place. Finally, I started to run with Riley while activating my comm. "This is Tether. There's a deposit of would-be thieves in front of Adelson's Grocery. Nothing serious, so local police should be able to handle it."

"Tether?" It was Miss Militia's voice that came back. "You were ordered to take time off. You're not even supposed to be out in costume."

"Yeah, something came up." I glanced sidelong at Riley as the two of us turned the corner, following after the flying bird-thing. "Bones decided to go on a patrol, so I thought we could team-up."

"Bones..." I could hear the frown in Miss Milita's voice. "Wait, isn't that what you said-"

"Yup." I confirmed, glancing up to see Spectacles leading us down an alley.

There was silence on the line for a moment before the Protectorate leader replied, "Carry on. We'll send a patrol to pick up your catch. Report in when you're done."

"Got it. Oh and tell the cops not to touch the guy wrapped up in the tentacles." I disconnected just as Miss Militia started to sputter, focusing on Spectacles as the flying creature came down to land on the edge of a fire escape just outside of an apartment window. He gave a soft caw and remained rigidly focused on the window itself.

While we had the chance, I asked, "Any side effects from that paralyzing bite or the gas?"

Riley's not-terribly-encouraging answer was, "I'd be surprised." Then she pointed up to the window. "Spectacles says that the last bad guy is in there. Can we go up and get him?"

Glancing toward the four-taloned bat-owl thing, I paused before nodding. "Yeah, but we need to limit the potential danger to other people that live there." Thinking for a second, I slowly smiled. "Okay, you want to be the one to catch him, right? I'll go around and inside, and drive him out the window. You be ready to catch him."

I could pretty much hear the grin in Riley's face as the suit's head bobbed. "Yay! I mean uhh, will do, fellow protector of humanity and defender of all that is good and of ummm... like... bunnies and stuff."

Shaking my head, I left the bio-tinker in the alley to make my way around the front of the building and inside.

It took a minute to get upstairs and work out which apartment was the right one, but eventually I stood outside the appropriate door. Before I could do anything, a door down the hall opened, and a woman stepped out. She was talking loudly on her phone, and stopped short at the sight of me in costume.

"Holy shit, Terry! It's one o'them Wards. Tether! Ya know, the funny one that killed Lung! Hey, can I get an autograph?"

Inside the apartment, I heard someone scrambling around. The woman's loud voice had carried. Flinching, I held a hand up. "Hold that thought." Turning back to the door, I stepped just to the side of it before bracing a line to force it open, calling out, "Rabbit season!" The second that the door opened, the deafening roar of a shotgun filled the air, taking out part of the wall beyond the door.

Before anything else could happen, I stepped back around the doorway and reached out a hand. The remaining would-be thief was there with his gun raised. I yanked the weapon out of his hand while lamenting, "No, no, no. You say Duck Season and then someone _**else**_ uses the gun. Haven't you read the script?"

Rather than respond to that, the man spun around and sprinted for the window. I kept my voice droll and monotone. "No. Wait. Don't run. Whatever shall I do to catch up with you?"

The woman's contribution to this entire event was a half-squealing running commentary with 'Terry'.

I took my time, at least to an extent, walking into the apartment and moving to the window to see what was going on. By the time I got there, the last thug was standing in the alley below with some kind of bulbous growth on the back of his neck, slapping himself repeatedly.

Whispering a prayer to myself, I slipped through the window and dropped down. As soon as I landed, I could see that the 'growth' on the man's neck was some kind of fairly big insect-like thing. It was about the size of one of those large Christmas light bulbs, with a similar shape save for the head (which looked like a preying mantis). It had some kind of stinger coming from its mouth that was pushed into the man's neck, and Riley seemed to be controlling his actions to make the man smack himself over and over. "Bad, bad, bad. You don't hurt people. You don't try to kill super heroes. Or—Or anybody else. And you don't uhhh... steal. Yeah, you don't steal." To me, she added a stage-whispered, "That is illegal, right?"

Working my mouth a little, I stepped that way. "Yeah, definitely illegal. Okay, ummm, I think we got him. You can let him go now, or pull the thing out or off or... whatever."

"Sure!" Riley lifted the arm of the suit and whistled. "Here, Strings!" The bug... thing pulled its stinger out of the man's neck. Its Christmas-light shaped back end opened up like a shell to reveal two different pairs of wings that began to beat blindingly fast, lifting the thing up. It flew to Riley's outstretched arm and disappeared into a hidden compartment there.

Released from the thing's control, the man collapsed to his knees and sobbed out that he was sorry and that could we please just take him to jail now. I took the time to handcuff him with zip-ties before hauling him up to walk back to where the other members of his little gang were. "Boy did you guys pick the wrong night to go out."

By the time we got back to the front of the grocery store, there was already a couple of police cruisers parked there with their lights spinning. I glanced toward Riley and hesitated before bracing myself as we walked the rest of the way to where the four policemen were standing over the guy that had been trussed up with the tentacles. I had considered asking her to wait for me, but if she really wanted to be a hero, she probably needed to experience all of it.

The cops looked up as we approached, and Bones raised a hand in greeting. "Hello, fellow stoppers of bad things! We bring one more criminal to be judged." Her voice turned to a stage-whisper then. "They're pretty lame criminals though. They were just stealing stuff."

"Tether," one of the officers that I recognized addressed me. "Who uhhh, who the hell is this?"

"Hey!" Bones pointed a finger at the officer. "How can we set an example for the bad guys if you say bad words? Let's keep it clean, huh?"

"Err, this is Bones." I gestured that way. "Sh-" Clearing my throat, I corrected myself. "He's new. Just kind of a... private vigilante. Don't worry, everything's fine." Under my breath, I added, "I hope."

"What's the he—heck is this stuff?" The officer poked the entangled thug with a foot, clearly wary of actually touching the tentacles themselves.

"I got it!" Hurrying over to the man, Riley knelt down and tickled the fleshy orb until the tentacles retracted back inside, leaving just the little nubs that had been there before. She straightened and tucked it away. "He's all yours, officers! Oh! And the umm, the others'll stop being paralyzed in about twenty minutes."

Looking down at the captured criminals, then back up again, the policeman shrugged. "Huh. You're a weird one, but good job, I guess."

He and the other officers stepped away, and Riley spun toward me, her whisper elated. "Didja hear that? He said good job!"

Smiling to myself, I nodded and reached out to pat the girl on the shoulder. "It _**was**_ a good job, Bones. You caught the bad guys and didn't overly hurt anyone. Very nice." While she preened happily (a very odd thing to see the Bones-suit do), I added, "And speaking of good job, there's a lady back at the apartments that wanted an autograph. What do you say we give her two of them? She might be your very first fan."

"My first... fan?" Riley echoed in wonder before bouncing a little. "Oooh, oooh. Can we really?"

Chuckling in spite of myself, I turned and started to walk. "Yeah, let's go see if she's still around. On the way, you can tell me about that... thing that was controlling that guy."

As we walked, she enthused. "I can't believe I might get a fan already. People might know me! I mean, Bones. They might know Bones. They might think about what I did and not be... ummm..." Her voice went softer then. "Scared."

"Don't worry," I assured her. "Something tells me it's not going to be long before everyone knows about Bones."

**22.03**

"And you're absolutely certain that the criminals who were attacked by Bonesaw-"

"Bones." I interrupted Mrs. Pelham. She and Miss Militia were sitting across from me at the PCIPS HQ, which had been the closest building they could drag me to for a post-patrol interview. They had wanted to pull in Riley as well to give her a once-over, but I'd convinced them it was a really bad idea for the moment. "Her name is Bones. Oh, but you should use the term he and him because that's part of her disguise. The suit looks and sounds male."

"Bones then." Miss Militia agreed before Lady Photon could say anything else. "The criminals who were attacked by Bones, you're certain that there won't be any lasting effects?"

I bit my lip, pausing to glance out the window. We were on the third story, and I could see the lights of the freeway in the distance. The silence stretched on for what seemed like a long time given the subject matter, but was likely only a few seconds. Finally, I turned back. "First, she didn't 'attack' them. She told them to surrender and they attacked her first. Then she used non-lethal methods of bringing them down. Honestly, if she wanted to hurt them, 'paralyzing gas' would only be step one, not the sum total of her attack. She could have done a lot worse if she had any desire to."

"We know." Mrs. Pelham agreed with a nod. "That's why we're asking you if she _did_ do anything else."

That much I was confident about. "No. She said that if there were any side effects to the paralyzing gas or bites, or any of the rest of it, she'd be surprised. I believe her. She really does want to be a hero, even if she's not really sure how. This is her chance, guys. This is... maybe a little hint about what she could have been if Jack Slash and the rest of the Nine hadn't ruined her. She did good tonight, really. I know how tempting it is to look for her sinister motive or angle, but she doesn't have one. I'm not saying she won't make mistakes or go too far sometimes, but she's _**trying**_ to do better."

The two women exchanged glances briefly, before Miss Militia let out a long breath. "Okay." She reached down to the briefcase beside her and took out a folder, setting on the table between us. "We want you to give this to her." Her hand slid the folder across the table, tapping it twice.

"What is it?" I asked, opening the folder to take a look. There was a stack of official looking papers inside, with several spots where clearly important signatures had been scrawled. The papers were covered with stamps from local, state, and federal offices of the PRT, as well as the governor. Flipping through them without really looking, I even saw a spot where both the attorney general and the president of the United States himself had signed, and made a strangled noise. "This... this..."

"A provisional rescinding of her kill order." Mrs. Pelham confirmed. "Contingent upon her toeing the line. If she gives the authorities any reason, any reason at all to think that she's going back to her old ways, the kill order goes back into effect. There's also a list of doctors across the country who would like to speak with her regarding some of her... experiments that they've been forced to try to care for after she discarded them. It would go a long way toward convincing people of her... change if she would contact those doctors and give them a better idea of how to help her former subjects."

I blanched, not having thought about the fact that Riley probably had a lot of those 'test subjects' lying around that she hadn't bothered to kill or do anything with once their initial use was done. "I'll give them to her. Hopefully she'll... I'll try. Talking about her being Bonesaw and what she used to do when she was is kind of a subject I try to avoid, but if it'll help people, then I'll try."

"Good." Miss Militia met my gaze. "These people need help. You might know her as an innocent little lamb, Tether, but the_creature_ she used to be did appalling things to a great number of people. They can't just be forgotten and swept under the rug because **now** she wants to do good. If she truly wants to make amends, she can prove it by helping the people she destroyed."

Swallowing hard, I closed the folder and bobbed my head. "I'll get it to her, I promise." I looked back and forth between them. "Is there anything else?"

"In a hurry?" Mrs. Pelham asked. "You aren't going back out on patrol, are you? The mandatory vacation time still exists. You are supposed to be taking a _break._"

"Nope, no patrol," I assured them with a smile. Once they relaxed, I added, "I just want to see if Lambda managed to beat Dennis at the dancing game."

* * *

><p>"So she really said, 'halt, evil-doers?', with the pose and everything?"<p>

It was two days later, and I was at the apartment that Theo and Cassie shared with Kayden and baby Aster. Missy was there too, and the four of us were sitting around the table playing a board game together.

Meanwhile Aster sat on the floor eating cheerios out of a cup while she played with some blocks right alongside Jalopy in his spider-form. The tiny robot kept playing various children's songs for the little girl, much to her delight, and the two of them were engaged with building a block tower together. Aster flat-out loved Jalopy, and he was already fiercely protective of the girl. He'd bonded with Aster pretty much immediately, though she kept calling him a kitty.

Picking up the dice, I nodded toward Missy. "Yup, just like that. Those poor guys had no idea what they were dealing with." After rolling a four, I picked up my Legend token and moved it the appropriate number of spaces. "Draw an Endbringer card." I read the note on the space and groaned before reaching out to take the appropriate card and looked it over. "Simurgh destroyed a private lab that would have discovered a cure for Asthma. Go back nine spaces and lose one accolade."

While I made a face and followed the instructions, Cassie picked up the dice and spoke up. "You think she's gonna go out on her own again?" She rolled a six and slid her Chevalier token the appropriate distance, glancing at the space she'd landed on. "Battle card." Taking the top one off the appropriate deck, she laid it out so we could see the image of Sultan, a medium-level villain from the north-west of the country whose power had to do with providing people who trusted his leadership with enhanced strength and durability. The more they trusted him, the more powerful they became. His most trusted assistant, a man called Jones, was basically on par with Alexandria as far as raw physical power went.

"I managed to convince her that she should wait until I can go with her more." I shrugged. "Right now she's busy going over the folder that I passed along." I went quiet for a second then before continuing in a softer voice. "She was trying to remember some of the cases they had listed in there, and if there was anything that could be done about them. I guess some of them were really bad."

"Someone else roll Sultan for me." Cassie glanced down at the card. "He's got one die for himself and two for his resources and troops. Plus one on all rolls because of his power."

Theo reached out to take a few of the dice, shaking them up before letting them roll across the table. "Three, five, two becomes four, six, and three with the bonus. So thirteen."

Cassie nodded then. "Chevalier's got one die for himself and one for his weapon, plus two to rolls from a couple accolades." She started to roll before stopping. "Actually, I'm gonna go ahead and cash in an accolade so I can use another die this battle. So three dice, plus one to each roll from my remaining accolade." Rolling the dice, she took a second to count them up. "Five, six, two becomes six, seven, three. Sixteen, whoo! Take that, jackass." She used a finger to flick the Sultan card. "I get the accolade I spent back, because I won, plus another for beating a moderate villain. That's three accolades, which I am going to spend right now to upgrade Chevalier's power. So now it's a two dice power."

Taking the Sultan card and putting it in the middle of the game board where the Birdcage outline was, Theo started to take his turn. His Dragon token moved a few spaces before he had to draw a random event card that sent him forward two more.

While he was dealing with that, I looked toward Missy. "So what's going on with your dad wanting to move?" She had explained the situation to the rest of the team, so I wasn't spoiling anything.

The younger girl shrugged. "I told him no, and that the Protectorate wants me here. What's he gonna do, try to go to court over it? The Youth Guard only cares if I'm being hurt in some way, and I'm not. The PRT does more to keep track of me than him or mom, and he knows it."

"So he's not moving?" I asked while reaching down to tickle little Aster, making her squeal in delight.

Missy gave a disbelieving snort at that. "You're kidding, right? I said _**I**_ wasn't going, not that he had to leave behind anything important, like his baseball card collection. Get real."

Her words made me flinch, but it was Theo who spoke. "Ouch." He held the dice out for Missy to take while asking, "You really think he doesn't care that much?"

Missy shrugged and frowned, taking the dice. "Don't worry about it. I'm not some little baby that's gonna cry because my parents are stupid. I can handle it."

I reached out to poke the girl firmly. "Hey, trust me. After what we've done together, nobody around here thinks you're a baby. But sometimes it's good to talk about what's bothering you. Makes it easier to uhhh, to deal with all of it." I glanced to the others two. "Right?"

Cassie gave a little smirk before nodding. "Sure, you gotta get things off your chest or you'll explode. Venting is a good thing. After all, I vent all the time and look how healthy I am."

Missy rolled her eyes along with the dice. "Yeah, you're the picture of mental health. What'd the psychologist say about toting around all those guns during Lung's attack?" The dice came up with nine, and she counted the spaces before sliding her Narwhal token until it reached the same space that my Legend token was on. "Speaking of being a team." She looked to me. "What do you think?"

Since we were on the same space, we had three options about the kind of team-up event we could do. We could draw three battle cards and participate in the fight together, with bonuses for working together. Or we could each draw three random event cards and pick the one that we wanted while shuffling the others back into the deck. If we did that, however, we also had to take an Endbringer card. The random chance cards were about seventy-five percent good things (though of varying use) and twenty-five percent bad, while the Endbringer cards were about ninety percent bad and ten percent good. Again, exactly **how **bad the Endbringer card was varied. Sometimes it was worth taking one when you also got your pick of three random event cards. Finally, we could just each gain a single accolade, which wasn't a big deal compared to the other choices, but lacked any kind of drawback.

I considered the options for a moment before straightening. "I say we do the battle. Legend and Narwhal? We can take 'em. It's a chance for three accolades at once, each."

Missy nodded. "Sure, why not." She reached out toward the villains deck and slid the first card off the top, turning it over to reveal Three-Count, a minor tinker-for-hire that operated mostly in Florida, whose specialty lay in knocking people out and imprisoning them. He was a two dice villain.

Next, I reached out and turned over the next villain card. As soon as I saw who it was, I flinched.

"Kaiser." Theo's voice was quiet as he looked at the card on the table.

"Sorry." I picked up the card. "I'll toss it and draw again. I didn't even think about him being in there."

"No." His head shook. "Don't. It's okay. I mean... he was a villain. It's part of the game."

I hesitated, uncertain. "Are you sure?" When he nodded, I laid the card next to Three-Count.

Cassie nudged the boy. "Hey, if it makes you feel any better, at least he has to work with a black guy? Sucks for him." Her own eyes widened after that, realizing what she had just said. "Errr, shit, I meant that _**he'd**_ hate that, not that... fuuuuck." Lowering her forehead to rest on the table, she waved a hand. "Ignore me. Just play. I didn't mean it like that. Draw the next card or whatever."

Patting her on the back, I looked toward Missy and asked, "You wanna draw the last one?"

She nodded and turned over one more villain card, revealing Autonomous, a villain from New York whose power allowed him to remove any body part at all, from his eyes to his hair to his hands and so on, even his organs, and have them move and act independently, even to the point of somehow being able to 'see' what they were doing.

"Autonomous, Kaiser, and Three-Count." I arranged the cards between the two of us. "That's two two dice villains and one three dice villain. Think we can take 'em?"

Missy smiled a little and gave an easy nod. "Don't forget Kaiser gets to reroll the lowest result once, and Autonomous gets a plus one to his total roll for every body part he has nearby that can help which is..." Taking the die, she rolled it. "Two. So he gets a plus two."

"Does Three-Count get anything special?" Theo asked, curiously.

I turned the villain's card a bit to read. "Uhhh, yeah, if he wins you can't move again until you roll doubles, or three turns pass." Looking toward Missy, I gestured. "Go ahead and roll for him first."

Taking the two dice, Missy shook them up before rolling. "Uhhh, two and five. Seven."

I rolled for Kaiser next, counting up the three results. "Five, six, three." After rerolling the three into another five, that amounted to sixteen. "So sixteen plus Three-Count's seven is twenty-three."

Finally, Missy rolled for Autonomous. "Four and three. Plus two is nine."

"Twenty-three plus nine is thirty-two." Theo announced. "So you two have to beat thirty-two to win."

Taking my three dice, since I'd already upgraded Legend's power once, I rolled them. "Four, five, three. Plus three—errr plus two, I mean. Damn Endbringer card- from my accolades to each roll, makes eighteen." Picking up the dice once more, I handed them to Missy. "Good luck."

Like me, Missy had upgraded Narwhal to being a three-dice hero, though she only had one accolade left after doing so. "I'm cashing in my accolade and taking the extra die." She announced, taking four dice into her hands to shake them up before rolling. "Four... three... five... and four." Counting them up, she grinned. "That's sixteen. And Eighteen plus sixteen is thirty-four! We won!"

After high fiving the other girl, I counted out the pretty little polished stones that were accolades. "Three for you and three for me. Oh, plus the one you spent. That gives me five accolades again. One more and I can upgrade to four dice."

Normally, trading a guaranteed six bonus to each roll for one more die would seem like a terrible trade. However, the number of dice you had determined the amount of accolades you were allowed to add to each die roll. With two dice, you could add two accolades to each die. With three, you could add three, and so on. So if you had six accolades but were only a two dice hero, you could still only add two of your accolades to each roll.

"You thinking of a Slaughterhouse Run?" Cassie asked, wagging an eyebrow.

There were two ways to win the game. Either you kept going around until all the main villain cards were in the Birdcage area, then count up who had caught which ones. The player who caught the most won that way (enemies beaten during team-ups counted toward the totals for each of those players). Or, at any time, a player could declare that they were doing a Slaughterhouse Run. What that meant was that the special Slaughterhouse Nine cards (the game was a bit out of date about who each of the members were) would be shuffled and then fought one after another, with no breaks or upgrading in between. If the player managed to beat all nine cards (and they were all really tough ones, including the five-dice Crawler and the six-dice Siberian), they would win the game immediately. But if they lost even one fight, that player was out of the game.

My head shook. "Not right now anyway. Ask me after I upgrade at least once more. Maybe twice." Straightening, I lifted Aster off the floor and started to bounce her. Jalopy jumped to my arm and played 'ring around the rosies', and I spun in a circle to make the little girl squeal happily. "Isn't that right, Aster? We're gonna get much bigger and stronger before we do anything with those guys."

She giggled unknowingly at my words and waved her fist while saying, "Bah guy!"

I laughed and kissed the little girl's forehead. "That's right, bad guys. C'mon, you get to be my good luck charm."

We played the game some more. But before we could get too much further, Theo's cell phone beeped three times. The boy froze briefly, then snatched up his phone with wide eyes.

"Everything okay?" I asked, still holding Aster in my lap while she and Jalopy poked at each other curiously.

"Better." Theo was actually smiling. "It worked."

"What worked?" Missy asked, toying with the dice in her hand.

"You know how they couldn't get the bomb out of Shadow Stalker's head without Bakuda's help?" When we nodded, he went on. "Well since the Protectorate _**caught**_ Bakuda during the Lung thing-"

"Don't tell me she actually agreed to help." Cassie's tone was dark. "Or that they'd believe a word she said."

"Errr, no." Theo shook his head. "But ummm, they did manage to find some of her notes, including some about the bomb she used with Shadow Stalker. Not enough to get it out yet, but there were notes on the communication system she used between the bomb and the control ring. I ummm... I sort of... convinced Armsmaster to let me look at it and then made a drone that could track identical signals."

"Does that mean you can track the person with the ring?" I sat up a little, staring at the boy.

"Not exactly." He confessed. "The signal would only be active if the ring was either sending the detonation sequence, or doing its one of its random checks to make sure the bomb was still in place and not being messed with. They last like a second or two and it's always at a random time. Plus the ummm... the drone's range wasn't that great. I'm not that good with it yet. But I sent it out anyway and had the thing just patrol around, listening for the signal. It was a long shot, but-"

"But you got it?" Missy was standing. "What does that mean, exactly?"

Theo held up his phone so that we could see the map of the city on the screen, with a flashing red icon. "It uhhh, I think it means we know where the ring that controls Shadow Stalker's bomb is."

"Which means," I realized. "We know where the person that has Noelle is."

**22.04**

Sophia hadn't been blown up, of course. The remote had simply been doing one of its random checks to ensure that the bomb was still in place. And now, thanks to that, we knew where the person controlling the bomb, whoever they were, was. Or at least, where they had just been.

To say that things moved quickly after that would be an understatement of epic proportions. Not even a full hour had passed from the moment I made the call to Miss Militia before we had gathered behind an old closed down car lot (the **same** one that was where Amy had met with Marquis) down the street from where Theo's probe had indicated the remote had been accessed.

In this particular case, 'we' included not only the Wards or a small, select team. No, for this situation, **every** local Protectorate and Ward had been called in. Miss Militia and Lady Photon had apparently decided that the 'only in the event of an S-Class situation' requirement applied here.

Of course, initially a much smaller group would approach in an attempt to prevent Noelle from panicking at the thought that she was being hunted down. Sundancer, Genesis, Laserdream, Clockblocker, and I would go in first. Miss Militia had wanted to go herself, but had eventually concluded that if they wanted to convince Noelle she wasn't being attacked, sending in the leader of the Protectorate who happened to constantly be armed probably wouldn't send the right message. Not that_**everyone**_ wasn't constantly armed with their powers, but it was a psychological thing. Plus, as she had explained it, allowing _**Noelle**_ to agree to Miss Militia coming in would give the girl a feeling of control over the situation, which was very important if we were going to avoid an escalation. So, for the moment, Miss Militia and the rest of both teams would be waiting nearby in case things went wrong. On top of that, the Maine teams had been put on alert and told to be ready for transport in the event that things with Noelle **really** escalated. Hopefully none of it would be necessary, but it was better to have everyone ready to jump and then not need to than to try to get people coordinated with no notice.

"This is it." Marissa put a hand on my shoulder as she stared down the street in the direction that Theo's drone had marked. The building in question was still out of sight, but she gazed that way as though she could find Noelle through sheer willpower. "She's close, I know she is."

Before I could speak, Jess stepped up on the other side of her. She wasn't using her power. Jess walking was our best illustration to Noelle that the Protectorate would _help_ her. She kept her voice low. "Here's hoping she listens to reason." When Mars opened her mouth to object, Jess shook her head. "I want this to go well too. But you know how irrational she was before. Now she's had months to stew, after Krouse had carte blanche to say anything he wanted about how we betrayed her.

Marissa winced. "Oliver and Luke were there too."

"Oliver doesn't have the forceful personality that Krouse does." Jess pointed out. "And Luke has never been as close to her as most of us. We all resented her somewhat, even if it was unfair, but Luke was the most open about it next to Cody. He was pretty much ready to abandon her before we got here. The reason he stayed behind when we left was to protect Oliver and keep an eye on Krouse."

Deflating a little bit at that, Marissa bit her lip and looked back in that direction. Her voice was quieter now, but still determined. "She'll listen. She has to."

I saw Jess move her hand to take Marissa's, squeezing it as she relented with a slight nod. "I hope so."

Stepping away from where she had been talking to Battery and Penance (Aster was being watched by a PRT agent that commonly babysat the girl), Miss Militia approached. "Are you ready? The rest of us will spread out to surround the building and be ready the instant anything happens. If things go well, I'll come in with Panacea." She nodded to where Amy stood next to Crystal. "She has the cure."

The woman squinted at me after that, and I had the feeling she had a pretty good idea of where the 'cure' had originated. But she didn't press the issue, having apparently decided that accepting the 'Riley and Amy made it' explanation was better for everyone in the long run. It was one of those unspoken, 'I know you're lying and you know that I know you're lying, but we're both going to pretend not to so that we avoid even worse problems, but watch yourself, young lady' sort of situations.

Marissa was nodding. "We're ready. Right?" She turned slightly to look at where I was.

"Absolutely," I assured her, waving a hand toward Dennis and Crystal. The two of them would be primarily responsible for making sure that any of the probable threats inside stayed off of us long enough to get to Noelle and talk to her. Failing that, the rest of both teams could be called in. But that was a situation that we really wanted to avoid if at all possible.

Miss Militia seemed hesitant for a moment, but finally gave a slight nod. "Right. The five of you give us three minutes to get into position, then go in. And stay in contact. I want to know the very second that anything, and I mean anything goes wrong. Understand?" Her eyes passed over each of us.

Clockblocker saluted smartly. "Will do, Commandant Bosslady." As she squinted at him, Dennis continued. "Not that we needed the reminder. Trust me, if this goes sideways, you probably won't need the comm to hear us screaming for help. I can yell pretty loud."

"That's true." Crystal agreed before kicking Dennis in the shin, making him yelp. She smiled. "See?"

Looking even more doubtful than before, Miss Militia heaved a put-upon sigh and then stepped back. "Three minutes, then go in." She turned to me and squinted very briefly. "Be careful. No unnecessary risks. If the place is too well guarded, pull back and let the heavy hitters break through."

She marched off to get everyone else to their positions, and I exhaled while looking toward Jess and Marissa. "You really ready? This is kind of a big deal."

Jess swallowed, but nodded along with Mars. "It's a huge deal. But we're ready. It's time for this whole Noelle situation to be resolved. Past time."

The following couple of minutes passed in a way that seemed somehow simultaneously quick and agonizingly slow. Mars and Jess were both lost in worry about their friends, and even Dennis seemed to be at a loss for what to say. We ended up standing there in silence until Miss Militia came over the comm to report that everyone was in position.

"Here goes everything." Mars announced, and the five of us set out around the corner, moving toward the building that Theo's device had marked. Both Penance and Laserdream had done a quick fly-over earlier, and had reported that the place was the old Canoby's family buffet restaurant that had closed down a couple years earlier. I had gone to the place many times with my parents when I was younger, and actually remembered being pretty sad that it had closed down before we had a chance to go back.

Boy had my priorities changed in the past year.

"So," I started as we stood in front of the restaurant. The place looked dark from where we were. "Do we just go right in the front door, or what?"

"As opposed to?" Crystal asked, watching the place intently for any sign of life.

"I dunno." I shrugged. "It just seems too easy to just walk in, after all it took to find this place."

Clockblocker started walking then, crossing the parking lot. "No sense over-complicating things." The rest of us exchanged glances before shrugging and following him.

Abruptly, Crystal reached out to grab Dennis's arm, stopping him and the rest of us. "Wait. Look." She pointed toward a pile of trash in the corner of the lot next to an old dumpster.

"What's-" Belatedly, I noticed what she was pointing at. It wasn't just a pile of trash, there was a body there, lying in amidst the torn garbage bags. Eyes widening, I used a line to yank myself that way and crouched down over the fallen figure. Even as I arrived, I knew it was too late for the man. There was a single bullet wound in the middle of his forehead.

Landing beside me, Crystal leaned in to see before grimacing. She activated the comm. "Miss Militia, we have a dead man in the parking lot, next to the dumpster. He looks like a mercenary of some kind. He's wearing body armor andhis sidearm is still holstered. Single shot to the head."

There was a pause before Miss Militia replied, "Get in there and see what the hell is going on. We're moving in closer. The second absolutely anything goes wrong, we'll be there."

Marissa and Jess didn't need to be told twice. They went straight for the restaurant, most caution abandoned by that point. I couldn't really blame them, considering the off-hand way the single mercenary had apparently been executed and discarded.

Things didn't get any less confusing as we pushed through the door and into the restaurant itself. Straight ahead of us, where the hostess would normally stand to greet customers, another armored mercenary body lay. This one, like the last, had a single bullet wound in the middle of his forehead.

Two more bodies lay slumped in a booth to the left. It looked like they had tried to take cover but had been unsuccessful. One had another bullet wound, while the second looked like his head had been caved in when the heavy lamp above the booth had broken loose and fallen on him.

"Okay," Dennis announced while turning in a circle. "Now I'm seriously getting the creeps."

A muffled thumping noise came from the the doorway marked for employees only, and the five of us rushed that way. The thumping grew louder as we reached the kitchens and found the bodies of two more armed mercenaries near the sinks. One appeared to have been strangled with the long hose coming from the sink, while the other lay on his stomach with the handle of a carving knife sticking out of the back of his head.

Our attention was drawn quickly from the dead men to the door of the walk-in freezer, which jolted with each heavy impact of something pounding on it. A chain had been wrapped around the handle of the door itself and then padlocked to hold it shut.

"On it." Crystal pointed a finger at the chain, and a tiny laser shot out to cut through it within a few seconds. After that, Dennis and I quickly unwrapped the remains and pulled it away from the door.

Marissa reached out and pulled the handle, opening the door just as another hard thump came. She looked inside briefly before her eyes widened in surprise. "Luke!"

She rushed in, and I leaned around the corner of the door. Sure enough, Ballistic sat on the far side of the room with his back to the wall. He had been gagged, and his remaining arm was locked behind his back by what looked like hardened PRT foam. There were dented and broken metal pans lying all over the floor between him and the door. Apparently he had been using his power to propel things against the door in an attempt to either break it open, or get someone's attention.

As soon as the gag was off him, Ballistic cursed. "Fuck. Woman... some fucking woman in a suit and a ski mask. She killed all the mercs the Outliars hired and shoved me in here."

"The Outliars?" I blurted, shocked. "They're the ones that had you guys? They're the ones that took Noelle?" That didn't fit the minor gang with moderate aspirations that I'd chalked them up as. True, there had been the issue with the power vials, but that seemed more like something they had tripped over than genuine resources. After all, they had been trying to give the powers away to whichever thug put on the best show when fighting the Wards. That didn't scream 'master plan.'

"Yeah," Ballistic shifted his weight while responding. "But not for long. That bitch in the suit was going after Noelle. That's why she came."

Marissa straightened, head shaking. "I can't get your hand loose. It's... foamed to the wall."

"Yeah, another thing I owe the bitch for." Ballistic replied. "Just go, she was _**just**_ here. Through the manager's office there's a hidden stairway to the basement. That's where they put Noelle and Oliver. Hurry up, before she gets awa—errr, Jess, are you fucking walking?"

Jess gave him a thumbs up. "Once we get you guys out of here, I'll show you how well I dance now too." Then she withdrew, and we ran for the manager's office that Ballistic had indicated.

Well, most of us ran. Crystal flew while reporting what we were seeing to Miss Militia, reaching the room ahead of us before blasting the door straight off. Inside, yet another dead mercenary lay across the blood-soaked desk, this one with a handful of pencils stuck halfway into his neck.

The apparently normally 'hidden' staircase had been left open, and all five of us practically dove for it. My mind was reeling the whole time. The Outliars had been the ones who had Noelle? Some woman in a suit and mask was killing off the mercenaries that had been guarding her? Who was she? Why did the Outliars want Noelle? What the hell was going on?

Unfortunately, it didn't look like the answer to those questions were going to be forthcoming. By the time we reached the bottom of the cement stairs, emerging into what looked like a glorified (and massive) cellar, the place was completely empty.

Empty, that was, except for a glowing portal on the other side of the room. The portal illuminated the outline of a woman in a business suit that seemed somehow familiar even as I shielded my eyes from the light of the portal.

"Noelle!" Marissa called, helplessly. "Oliver!? Where are they? What did you-" The portal closed then, before anyone else could do anything to stop the woman. She was gone, and the room was empty.

For a second, we all stood there, staring at the spot where the portal had been. Jess took a few steps that way, her voice low. "She... she must have taken them through the portal."

Mars stared at the spot, lifting her hands to cover her masked face as a shudder ran through her. "So close. We were so close. Luke said they were just here. Oliver and Noelle were _**right **_here."

"Who the hell **was** that bitch?" Dennis wanted to know. "Some woman in a suit waltzes in and kills a bunch of armed mercs without breaking a sweat, then just portals straight out of here with a couple passengers?"

My hand moved to take Marissa's. I didn't care about protocol at that moment. I wanted her to know that I was there. At the same time, I also took Jess's hand. The two of them stood silently, clearly coming to terms with how close they had been to getting Noelle and Oliver back, and even more importantly, with getting the cure to Noelle.

That gloomy silence continued for several long seconds, while we heard the sound of the rest of both teams coming into the restaurant above now that Crystal had given them the all-clear.

Then a new voice spoke up. "What's with all the doom and gloom attitudes?"

Whirling around, I stared at the figure that stood there in the doorway behind us. "D-Dinah?"

"Dinah Alcott?" Crystal was staring as well, her mouth open. "What... what are you doing here?"

"We wished to see our initial progenitor once again." One of the Pandoras (probably Epsilon, since she was the one that spent the most time around Dinah) stepped into view from the same stairwell, joining Dinah. "And congratulate her for being cured."

"We were too late." Marissa said quietly, morosely. "We didn't make it on time. They took her. Some... woman in a suit."

"She did?" Dinah's head tilted and then she shook her head in casual disbelief. "Nah, I don't think so." Before we could react to that, she put her fingers to her mouth and gave a sharp whistle.

Dark shadows gathered in the room a moment later, blackness that eclipsed all light for a few seconds. When it dissipated, I jolted backward with a yelp at the sight of the enormous figure that it left behind. Strange, seemingly random body parts covered the massive pile of flesh, muscle, and bone. There were several mouths from what I could see, and at the very top, the upper torso of an ordinary girl. It was almost like a centaur with the bottom half of an eldritch abomination instead of a horse.

"N-Noelle!" Marissa blurted, eyes wide. She clearly wanted to run to her friend, but had learned better.

The rest of us stared in shock while Mr. Hebert and Faultline emerged from the other side of the figure, who still seemed to be getting her bearings. Faultline pointed at Dinah. "Triple our usual fee for the swift response. You agreed."

"Swift response? Fee?" I turned to stare at the other girl. "You sent them to get Noelle?"

Dinah shrugged. "What can I say? My power said that you guys weren't going to make it in time, so I sent in reinforcements to get her out.

"After all, what's the use of having these powers if you don't use them to help your friends?"

**22.05**

There were other things that I wanted to ask Dinah, but I fell silent because Noelle had twisted her human torso around to look at us. The rest of her body was so... wrong, such a broken and jumbled collection of mass and _parts_ that it made her completely normal human torso and head look even more out of place. It looked like a normal girl had been shoved up to her waist into a small mountain of flesh.

Unfortunately, her attention wasn't on either of her friends, but on me. "**You**."

"Uhh, hey there." I lifted a hand in greeting. "Good to meet you, finally. I've heard a lo—whoa!" My tentative words were interrupted as the massive body stampeded forward with surprising speed. I barely managed to use lines on my feet to propel myself up and backward into a flip before using more lines to draw myself up to the corner of the ceiling.

Laserdream flew up between the mutated girl and the spot where I was crouched between the wall and ceiling, using lines to keep myself there. "Stop! We're not here to fight you."

"Stole my friends, stole my life, stole my chance!" Noelle spat the words, practically shaking with rage.

"**Noelle**!" Jess shouted the name to get her old friend's attention. "Noelle, look at me! Look!"

Finally tearing her hateful gaze away from me, twisting her torso to see the other girl, Noelle sounded surprised. "Wh... Jess? But you're... you're..."

"Walking." Jess nodded, staring intently at Noelle to keep her attention. "Yeah. You know how I'm walking? Because of these guys. Because of that girl's help, the one that you're trying to crush."

The other girl's face twisted in anger as she looked back at me. "Traded me, abandoned me to help yourself. You don't care about me. You never cared. I have to-"

"No one abandoned you, Noelle!" It was Marissa's turn to speak, moving up beside Jess. "We abandoned Krouse and his stupid plans that never change. We wanted to help, but not the way that _**Krouse**_ chose. He's the one that wouldn't let us see you after we left _**him**_, not you. _**He**_ decided that there was only one way to cure you, _his_ way, and nobody else had a choice in the matter. We never stopped wanting to help you, Noelle. We stopped trusting **him**. We stopped believing that he had any clue about what he was doing. We wanted you to get help, _**real**_ help that wasn't Krouse's delusions or lies."

Noelle's pale, sickly face twisted a little in some mixture of anger and confusion. "Krouse loves me. Krouse is the only one I can trust. He wants to help me. He wants-"

"If he loved you," Jess said flatly. "He could admit when he was wrong. If he loved you, he'd do anything to help you, even go to the Protectorate. If he loved you, he'd notice that none of his plans were working, and that going to prison or quarantine or whatever would be worth it to get you the _**help**_ you needed. He convinced us that we had to do horrible, horrible things to find a way home, Noelle. But he never just _**asked**_. He never tried looking for help from the people that have the most resources for it. Even after he failed over and over again to do it his way, he never admitted he was wrong."

"Would've killed me." Noelle's head shook, her massive lower body heaving a little. "Or tried to. Then I would've killed... killed a lot more. He keeps me safe, kept me away from people."

"You **did** kill people, Noelle." Marissa's voice was quieter, but firm. "We just covered it up and kept moving. Maybe Krouse meant to protect you, but he was wrong. We were wrong. We were all wrong. Because we just made things worse. We made everything, this whole situation, worse."

"Would've... would've tried to kill me." Noelle repeated stubbornly. "Wanted me dead."

It was Jess's turn to speak. "Maybe they would, Noelle. Maybe. But tell me something, do you _**like**_ being a monster? Do you like killing everyone around you? Do you enjoy what you're turning into?"

Noelle's face twisted in revulsion and her head shook. "Never. Don't—no. Don't want this."

"Would you rather be whatever that stuff is turning you into, or would you rather die?" Jess demanded. "If that was your choice, Noelle, if you had a choice between dying and becoming more of that _**thing**_, which would you choose? Would you rather die, or become something that kills everyone you know, everyone around you? Murderer or dead, Noelle, your death or thousands, which would you choose?"

Noelle's body was heaving with frustration, one of her feet stomping down hard enough to shake the room. "I don't want to kill! But I can't die! I tried, I tried to make myself die but it won't let me!"

Marissa spoke up softly then. "If you really wanted to die, Noelle, then why did you let Krouse talk you out of going to the Protectorate? Who do you think had the best chance of stopping you, no matter what? Who do you think had the best chance of containing you _**before**_ things got this bad?"

"We were hit by the Simurgh, Noelle," Jess put in, her voice a little shaky. "Krouse made us think that the people who wanted to quarantine us were the bad guys, but doesn't quarantine make sense now?! I mean look at what happened. The people you killed would still be alive if you were locked up, if we had all been locked up. Maybe they would have locked us up and looked for a cure, or maybe they would have killed you. Maybe. But either way, isn't that better than... than this? Running away, following Krouse's stupid plans, it just made things worse."

The confusion and uncertainty in Noelle's expression grew by the moment, her face twisting a little. "Krouse helped me. Francis wanted to make me better. His way... his way was the only way. The Protectorate would have killed all of us."

"Noelle," Jess waved her hand pointedly. "Do I look dead? And even if that was the only solution, even if killing you was the only way to save everyone else, is that completely wrong? What part of stopping you from becoming this monster you're turning into makes the Protectorate look like the bad guys, Noelle? Because this whole thing, it never should have been just about us and what we wanted. We made the wrong choices. We should have stayed put and let the Protectorate know what happened. Hiding you, running around the country while you keep getting bigger and stronger and have less and less control over yourself, what part of that makes sense if we **didn't** want you to hurt people? We were blind, Noelle. We were blind and stupid, because we didn't think things through. The Protectorate would have stopped you? How does that make them the bad guys? Is it fair? No. No it's not fair. None of this was _**fair. **_But that's the Simurgh. She doesn't play fair.

"You never even wanted to be a monster. You never wanted any of this, but _**Krouse**_ couldn't let you go. Krouse decided that he'd rather you be a monster than be dead, and we... helped him. We made things worse, because we couldn't let you go either. We listened to Krouse, and then we were too afraid to stop listening to him, because that would have meant admitting all the mistakes we made. It would have meant admitting that we did exactly what the Simurgh wanted us to do."

"We love you, Noelle." Marissa moved a step closer. "We care about you. But caring about someone isn't about hiding the truth from them. Sometimes when you care about someone, you have to do things that hurt them, when it's for the best, when it's the only way to really help. Krouse... doesn't love you. He **needs **you. There's a difference, Noelle. He **needs** you to be there. He needs to be the one who saves you, Noelle. That's what he wanted. If he loved you, if he really loved you, he'd help you no matter what. Even if helping you meant admitting he was wrong. Even if it meant losing you so you didn't have to hurt anyone. And mostly, even if it meant letting someone _**else**_ be responsible for you."

"No other way." Noelle insisted, though her voice was weaker and more uncertain. "Krouse knew. He knew there was no other way. He tried..."

"He didn't." Marissa shook her head. "He didn't try anything other than his same old plans, Noelle. And if there was no other way, then why do we have a cure for you?"

Noelle froze at that, twisting her body around more fully. "A... a cure?"

Marissa nodded. "Yes. We have a cure. We can help you, Noelle. But not like this. You can't be obsessed with revenge against someone who didn't do anything wrong. I care about you, but I also care about Tether. And I'm not going to let anyone, not even you, hurt her."

"You have to drink the cure, Noelle." Jess explained patiently. "Just like you drank the formula that made you into this to begin with."

I saw Crystal stiffen slightly at those words as she floated in front of me. Clearly she'd realized what that meant for the rest of the Travelers. Below me, Dennis turned his head to look my way as the same realization came to him, and I gave a slight nod. We had explained that Riley and Panacea's formula would only work on 'someone like Noelle', but not the details. Now they understood.

Jess was continuing. "You have to drink it, which means you have to calm down. No one can get close enough to you to force you to drink it, Noelle. You have to calm down and choose to do it."

Marissa nodded. "And you can't calm down as long as you're obsessed with Tether. She's not the bad guy, Noelle. No one here is the bad guy. You're not bad. But you **do** have to choose."

"You can be like Krouse," Jess explained. "And cling to trying the exact same thing over and over, never admitting when you might be wrong. You can stick with your emotion. You can let this monster you're turning into manipulate and control you by making you hate Tether. You can keep being obsessed with this stupid 'her or me' bullshit that Krouse pushed on you."

"Or," the new voice was Luke, who was stepping into the room. "You can let go of all that stupid bullshit and take this god damn cure so we can move on with our lives." He held the vial in his remaining hand as he stood in front of Dinah and Pandora, who had remained silent and out of the way the whole time. Mr. Hebert and Faultline had also remained silent, but in the opposite corner.

Apparently Miss Militia had decided that sending Luke in with the cure was better than the previous plan.

Noelle's eyes were fixated on the vial. "Cure... there is no cure." She sounded confused and lost, with a hint of hope in her voice that was beaten down by the distrust that Krouse had instilled. "There isn't."

"There is." Marissa pointed to the vial that Luke held. "It's right there. But you have to trust us. You have to _**stop**_ trusting Krouse and trust **us**. I want to help you, Noelle. _**We**_ want to help you. But you have to want to help yourself first. You have to stop believing what Krouse said and take this cure. Because no one here can make you without spilling or ruining it. This has to be your choice, Noelle."

"We did everything we could," Jess told her. "We got the cure to you. Taking it? That has to be you."

"Your choice," Luke extended his hand upward with the vial in it. "Believe us, or believe Krouse. Ain't nobody else that can make that decision for you."

For a long moment, violent shudders ran through Noelle's body as she warred with herself, torn between her own desires and the desires of the thing she had been turning into. Part of me wanted to speak up, wanted to say something, but I knew it would be the wrong thing to do. This was something that Noelle and her friends had to get through. Like they had said, it had to be Noelle's choice. Nobody else could force her to drink that cure without spilling or ruining it.

Finally, her massive form slumped down to the floor, tears running freely down her pale face that looked so ordinary next to the grotesque bulk of her lower half. "Please." She spoke quietly. "I don't want to be this. I'm tired. I'm so tired. I want it to stop. I can't tell if you're lying. Just help me. Please."

Marissa took the cure from Luke and moved that way. One step after another, she approached the enormous figure. She ignored the collection of random body parts, the three different mouths that lined the front of the thing, and focused instead on her tired, lost friend. "Noelle, we wouldn't lie to you." She held the cure up. "Take it. Drink it. Trust me. Trust us. We are not lying to you."

Another tremor ran through the big form, and Noelle lifted her gaze to look at me. "You took my friends away." Her words were less accusation and more the last remnant of an anger that her beast-self had clung to for so long in order to justify her behavior, to distract herself from the real problem.

I shook my head then, responding bluntly, but truthfully. "No. It wasn't about you. Our relationship had nothing to do with you. It was about us. Her and me. I care about Marissa because of who she is. I wasn't taking her away from you. That's not how relationships work. It's not a battle. She can care about both of us. I care about her, and I care about you too. I don't _**know**_ you, but I care about you. I want to help you, because Marissa wants to help you. Krouse is the one who thinks it has to be one way or another, and he made you think the same way."

Noelle was still and quiet after that, still staring up at me. I sensed something else behind her gaze, something that felt empty and... broken, that had been twisted around and torn apart until it was only part of what it could be. The _thing_ that she was turning into, it wasn't what it should have been.

Finally, she lowered her gaze and looked at the vial in Marissa's hand, so tiny next to her own bulk. I saw her hesitate before slowly lifting one of her normal arms, reaching out to pluck the vial up.

When she addressed Marissa again, her voice was as desperate plea that sounded as lonely and sad as I could ever imagine. "You're still my friend?" She held that vial tight in her normal hand, clearly terrified about what she was about to do. Not that I could blame her. Look at what happened the last time she'd trusted one of her friends and took a vial like the one she was holding.

"Yes, Noelle." Marissa assured her. "I'm still your friend. I still care about you."

"We all do, Noelle." Jess moved next to Marissa. "Please, take the vial. Take your cure."

"Yeah," Luke shrugged his shoulders before moving up beside the two girls. "Let's get this done with, Noelle. We've been fucked by the Simurgh for too long. Make the right choice and get back to normal, huh?"

Staring at the vial for another second, Noelle gave one more violent shudder before flicking the top off with her fingers. With a choked little sob that sounded like she was ready to give up and would have accepted the vial even if it had been poison, as long as it stopped her from becoming even more of a monster, she tossed her head back and poured the liquid down her throat.

The instant that she did, my line's grip on the ceiling failed, and the floor leapt up to smack me in the face. All around me, I saw the rest of the group slumping to the floor as well.

Something... vast moved through the emptiness of space. It was huge in a way that I had no sense of comparison for. Not just in a physical sense, but in every way that I could imagine, and even more that I had no hope of comprehending. This... thing that drifted through space was alive. It was alive and its power utterly eclipsed anything else in the vast sea of stars in which it dwelt. This thing, this figure whose size dwarfed even planets, stretched not only through the simple space around it, but _**into**_ other dimensions as well. It wasn't only present in one reality, it was present throughout many, its alternate selves all connected and aware as it flew onward.

Abruptly, I jerked upward like a swimmer coming up for air, gasping loudly as my eyes opened to find myself back in the same large room that I had been in before. "What... what..."

Beside me, Dennis sat up, groaning as well. "What the hell was that? I just had the weirdest... dream."

Before I could respond to that, or ask if he'd seen what I had seen, a loud voice called out, "Noelle!"

Spinning around on my knees, I stared across the room. The massive, unbelievable bulk was still there... but it was an empty husk. The flesh hadn't disappeared. It had just... fallen into the corner and lay there like a discarded shell.

And lying in front of it, face down, was the girl that it had been attached to. Her upper half... _and_ her lower half. She looked completely normal as she lifted her head to look around. "I... I'm..." She looked around, turning to stare at her normal lower half. Obviously, she wasn't wearing anything on her lower half, but it was... well, 'covered' to an extent by a few remains of the body that had been attached to her. It was just enough to spare some of her modesty.

"I'm alive?" The girl sounded shocked. "I'm... me?"

"Noelle!" Marissa repeated her cry. By that point, she had managed to scramble up and slid that way, throwing her arms around her friend to hug her as tightly as she could. "You're okay! You're... you're okay. Oh my god, you're all right. You're you. You're you, Noelle! I can... I can touch you. See? I can touch you and it's okay. You're okay. Oh god. Oh thank you. Thank you." She repeated the words, holding Noelle tightly.

Both girls were crying then, as they clung to each other. I smiled a little to myself before glancing toward Dennis and then back again as I picked myself up a little shakily. "It worked." I said slowly, in a bit of wonder while stepping over to help Jess climb to her feet.

Her head bobbed while she continued to stare at her two friends. "It worked." She echoed my words before slowly moving that way. The girl crossed the distance to the other two, before falling to her knees to embrace both of them. The three girls became lost within their reunion.

Meanwhile, Luke heaved himself up and muttered, "Yeah, it worked. But I've got two questions. First, what the fuck was I just dreaming about? And second, where the hell is Oliver?"

I blinked at that, looking around. "Oliver?"

Faultline spoke up then. "The boy? Tried to get him, but that woman with the suit had him. Had to make a choice and get the big girl out."

"The... woman in the suit?" I stared at that, then slowly looked toward where Noelle was clinging to her friends, all of them crying in relief. It was only then that I made the connection between this masked suited woman and the one who had given Mr. Hebert his powers. Could they have been the **same** woman? "Why would the woman in the suit take... Oliver?"

Yet even then, even the confusion of what the strange intruder could possibly have wanted with Oliver, couldn't detract from the feeling of joy that I felt when looking toward the spot where Noelle, cured and in her own normal body, was reuniting with her friends.

Yeah, there were still questions. Even more of them than we'd had before. But for now, in this very moment, we'd done something good, something right.

Noelle was cured.

**Interlude 22 – Vista**

"Missy? Missy, are you paying attention?"

Missy Biron reluctantly tore her attention away from the window and toward the unsmiling face of her teacher, Mrs. Trout. She had been gazing out toward the parking lot in the utterly vain hope that masked ninjas would show up to rescue her from the tedium of eighth grade algebra. Hell, at that point she would have settled for a single guy looking somewhat shifty. Unfortunately, the lot had been utterly void of potential threats that she could have used as an excuse to leave.

Unlike Arcadia, Missy's middle school hadn't been attacked and damaged by a gang of psychopaths. Not that she wished it had, of course. But _**some**_ excuse not to be here would have been nice.

"No, Mrs. Trout," she answered truthfully. Not out of any real sense of honor, but because she quite honestly didn't care about what was being taught, and she didn't care if the teacher knew that. She already knew what her job was going to be as she got older, so why did she have to pretend to be an ordinary student for whom math like this might actually matter?

"Then why don't you tell me what is so fascinating outside that you simply had to pay more attention to it than me." The elderly teacher demanded, squinting in obvious annoyance that her pupil so obviously found the subject so distasteful. Missy wondered if the woman could possibly have been surprised by that fact. Did she come from some magical world where kids actually _liked _math? Surely part of becoming a school math teacher was acceptance that most kids hated it.

For most students in this situation, being asked that question would result in a lot of embarrassed stammering. Missy, however, just shrugged. "Sorry." She wasn't really that sorry, but she figured that the least she could do was pay lip service to being polite.

"Perhaps you think that you already know this subject well enough to teach the class, hmm?" Mrs. Trout stepped back and indicated the board. "If you don't need to listen to me, and can't explain what is more interesting outside, it must be because you know everything I'm teaching."

The class tittered a little while Missy looked toward the board. The formulas that were written across it might as well have been hieroglyphics. Even as she stared at them, the numbers seemed to swirl and blend into one another, looking even more like gibberish.

"We're waiting, Missy." Mrs. Trout prompted impatiently. "Are you ready to teach the class?"

Behind her, she could hear Tiffani and Danica snickering and whispering to each other. The word 'grade school' reached her. Missy shifted and tried to ignore the gossipy girls. "No, Mrs. Trout."

"And why aren't you ready to teach the class?" The teacher insisted on pushing things, intent on making her point as blatantly and uncompromisingly as possible.

The tittering behind and around her grew a little louder, a little more blatant. The teacher should have stopped it, but she was more intent on making her point to one girl than to keeping the rest of the class in line. Besides, why should she care if the class was snickering about Missy's embarrassment? She quite clearly _wanted_ Missy to be embarrassed, thinking that would make her pay attention in the future.

Taking in a deep breath and letting it out again, Missy forced herself to answer as calmly as possible. Still, her teeth remained gritted. "Because I don't know enough about the subject."

"Oh, you don't know enough? Is that all?" Mrs. Trout clearly decided that that wasn't making her point well enough. "Surely even knowing a bit of the subject would be enough to teach one class period. Just one tiny part of our lesson plan. Anything that we've gone over today would be just fine, dear." When Missy remained completely silent, she spelled the issue out for all to hear. "Can you tell us anything about one single thing that we've talked about today?"

Hands clenching a little bit under the desk while everyone, **everyone** stared at her and whispered, Missy's head shook faintly. It was all she could do not to growl out the words. "No... Mrs... Trout."

"Then I believe that what you mean to say is that you don't know _anything..._ about the subject."

Someone elsewhere in the class stage-whispered, "Knew she belonged in sixth grade."

Missy resisted, barely, the urge to tell the boy off. The teacher ignored the comment, and drawing attention to it wouldn't result in anything more than getting her the reputation of a tattletale (and not even the interesting semi-reformed villain kind) and thus make people see her as even more of a baby.

Instead, she forced herself to nod once, slightly. The words forced themselves out past gritted teeth, barely audible. "Yes, Mrs. Trout." _Let it go. Just move on. You've made your point and I didn't challenge you. Now focus on teaching the class and leave me alone._

Instead, the elderly woman, whose face resembled an old basset hound, pushed one step further. "Yes, what, Missy? As little attention as you've been paying, I need to hear the words to be sure that you even know what you're agreeing to." The class, by that point, was giggling audibly.

It took physical effort for Missy to keep her gaze locked on the teacher's without lashing out. One more. She could do one more, and just let the teacher have her victory. It didn't matter. It was just stupid school. Quietly, she ground the words out. "I don't... know... anything... ab-"

"At all." Tiffani whispered behind her, setting off another round of giggles that the teacher ignored.

Missy froze for a moment, turning back in her seat to look at the other girl. Tiffani sat there smiling smugly at her, pen tapping against the desk to indicate her extensive notes.

"Stop looking for help from the students who _**do**_ pay attention, Missy." Mrs. Trout ordered. "And finish what you were saying so that everyone who cares can get back to learning."

Instead, amidst more snickering, Missy slowly stood from her desk. She stared at the teacher for a second before speaking in a flat voice. "Maybe I'd pay more attention to things that I don't want to, if you paid attention to the things that _you_ want to pretend don't exist." Her head turned to give a pointed look toward the smug girls behind her before she picked up her book bag and started to the door.

"Missy!" Mrs. Trout sputtered. "Where do you think you're going?"

"To the principal's office." Missy replied, already completely done with this entire situation. "To file a complaint and request a real teacher."

* * *

><p>Mrs. Trout had complained about her, of course. She called Missy a disruption in the class, and claimed that the 'little girl' thought she should be allowed to ignore any rules that she didn't like.<p>

In the end, however, the principal had agreed that Missy should go to a new class. Trout hadn't liked that, claiming that Missy was just spoiled and that if every student who didn't like a teacher's methods got to just leave, every classroom in the school would be empty. The principal had said that Trout was being dramatic, and dismissed Missy while their argument continued.

Thankfully, math had been her last class of the day. Missy made her way to her locker and spun the combination, glad to be done with school for the moment. Ordinarily she'd be even more glad for the chance to let off some steam with a patrol, but she was grounded along with the rest of the Wards, so no patrolling allowed. She did, however, still have the afternoon off. Even though she was 'on vacation', they couldn't just put her in classes for two weeks and then take her out again. She was expected to find safe, non-cape ways of keeping herself busy during the time that she would ordinarily have been training or patrolling. Obviously, they didn't understand that patrolling _**was **_how she relaxed.

It wasn't fair. She understood why most of the team had been put on mandatory vacation after the Arcadia thing, but neither Missy or Mika had been there. Unfortunately, they were still considered 'too young for solo patrol', and therefore they couldn't go out without one of their teammates.

Missy had even volunteered to go on patrol with one of the _**adult**_ heroes, but had been told just to enjoy her vacation and get some rest while she could. Hell, she wasn't even allowed to go into the Wards base and train. Apparently vacation meant_**vacation.**_

Not even the whole situation with the former Travelers and that Noelle girl a couple days earlier had really done much to ease her restlessness. She'd gotten all dressed up and ready for a confrontation with a potential S-Class threat, only for nothing bad to happen. Apparently some woman in a suit had beaten them to the place and took out all the opposition before they even arrived.

To be fair, she _was_ glad that the situation had been resolved in probably the best way possible. She was happy for Madison's girlfriend and the other former Travelers, because it seemed like there were far too few situations with that much potential for horrible things that ended so well. It was nice to get a real win once in awhile, even if she personally hadn't done anything. She could still be happy for her friends and teammates. But it _also_ meant that she still had nothing to do.

Against all her protests, Missy was stuck here, grounded from doing her job and trapped with no outlet for the frustration that she felt toward her parents for being spiteful idiots who didn't know how to grow up, and to her father's girlfriend for treating her like some kind of two-year old with all the baby talk. She was **still** furious at her father for telling Willa about her secret identity, but he'd claimed that he cleared it through the PRT people first, and that with Willa moving in with him, it was better that she know so that no awkward situations would come up.

His excuses hadn't helped her anger, not that he'd noticed. He'd gone on to talking about Missy moving with him and Willa down to California as if she should be **excited** at the opportunity, totally oblivious to her continued frustration and irritation with him.

Aside from Mika, who was two grades younger than she was, Missy had no friends in this school. She couldn't relate to anyone, because all they cared about were stupid things like boy bands and what they watched on television. The one subject she might have interested them in, capes, she had to avoid like the plague to avoid drawing attention to herself. Besides, their views of what cape life was like made her want to strangle all of them even more than their stupid, inane yammering about whatever group of crooning boys was currently making their hearts flutter did.

Missy had no interest in pursuing any kind of friendship with the stupid little girls that were all over the place in this school. She wanted to go out and do her job, do the thing she'd been training for years to do. Instead, she had to cool her heals and wait around because of some arbitrary age rule made up by someone who had decided it was perfectly all right for a thirteen year old to participate in an Endbringer fight, but **god forbid** she do one simple patrol in costume without a babysitter.

**BANG**

The sound echoed through the hallway, even as Missy spun on her heel away from her locker, pivoting toward the source of the commotion. She took a step that way, lifting a hand to push a pair of gossiping girls out of the way while instinctively putting herself between them and the perceived threat.

A second, not quite as loud bang came then, as the boy who had just slammed his locker punched it once before stomping away, oblivious to Missy's reaction.

Unfortunately, not everyone had missed it. While Missy fought to get her adrenaline to calm down, she heard snickers behind her once again. Turning that way, she saw that the girls she had pushed out of the way in her attempt to protect them from what she thought was a threat were Tiffani and Danica.

"Geeze, paranoid much?" Tiffani asked before giving a trilling little laugh.

"Did you see the way she jumped in front of us?" Danica snickered through her words. "Like, what's she gonna do if there's some kind of threat, cry at it?"

"Tattle to the principal about it." Tiffani corrected. Her smirk deepened before she added, "And cry."

_Danica first. She's the bigger one. Step slightly to the right to put her between Tiffani and myself so they can't both retaliate at the same time. One kick to the side of the knee to make her bend this way, catch and apply pressure to the wrist to bend her forward and then one hard shove to put her head into the locker before letting her fall. Tiffani won't react fast enough to do anything before I can reach her and stop her scream with a punch to the stomach. It won't do permanent damage, but it'll drive the wind out of her. I may be small, but I can punch hard and I know where to hit. _

Of course, she didn't do any of that. Instead, she fantasized about it for a few seconds before turning away to close her locker door and walk away from them.

"God, did you see the way she was staring at us?"

"She's such a little freak."

* * *

><p>An hour later, Missy stopped her bike at the top of a short hill next to a gas station and frowned at the crowd gathered in front of the restaurant about a block away. <em>That's the place that Noelle was found at. <em>

Tempted to use her Wards phone to call in, Missy eventually decided against it until she knew more. Releasing the brake on her bike and pushing off, she coasted down the hill before reaching the back of the large crowd. There were dozens of people all bunched up with their camera phones out.

"Hey," Missy poked one of the guys at the back of the crowd. "What's going on?"

The man turned an excited look to her. "Scion." He announced with enthusiasm. "He's in there."

Taken by surprise by that, Missy stared at the man. "Scion? Where?"

"In that old restaurant." The man jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "First he was just floating over the building, then he went inside. There's one guy in there, trying not to crowd him or anything, but he says Scion went down to some basement room and he's just floating there. He's been in there for ten minutes already, just floating there without doing anything. You know how weird that is?"

She did. "You mean he's not doing anything at all?"

He nodded. "Nada. Just floating there, like he's... I dunno, daydreaming or something. One of the guys who actually got a good look at him said that he looks... uhhh... confused."

Confused? She'd heard of the golden man looking _**sad**_, but confused was a new one. Staring at the building past the crowd, Missy took a step back with her bike and took the phone from her pocket. Silently, she sent a text to Miss Militia, requesting permission to investigate.

'Negative.' The reply came back shortly. 'Battery/Assault already on the way to make sure people stay out of Scion's way and leave him alone. Relax. You are on vacation.'

Before Missy could think of a response to send that didn't involve telling Miss Militia where she could shove her vacation, there was noise from the crowd. She looked up quickly to see the famous golden figure emerge from the restaurant. He hovered just over the heads of the crowd, and Missy saw the expression that had been noticed before. Scion did indeed look uncertain, confused by whatever it was that had drawn him to the restaurant.

Some people thought that Scion was responsible for all the powers, just because he had shown up first and was so obviously more powerful than anyone else could even dream of being. The mystery surrounding his origin helped fuel those rumors.

If he was, could he somehow sense that Noelle had her powers removed? Was that what was confusing him?

The golden man seemed to ignore all the people calling out thanks to him for everything he had done. He simply floated there for another moment before abruptly flying up and away, disappearing from sight before most people had even realized he was leaving.

As she stood there on the sidewalk, staring at the spot in the sky where Scion had disappeared, Missy felt the slightest pang of envy.

At least nobody could tell **him** to take a vacation.


End file.
